Doc Talk Podcast Talks Oscars With Nominees Smriti Mundhra And Molly O’Brien

Director Smriti Mundhra’s Muslim Matchmaker premieres on Hulu today, a show that might be described as a sibling docuseries to her Netflix hits Indian Matchmaking and Jewish Matchmaking.

But that’s not all Mundhra has going on, by any means. She directs one of the episodes of the upcoming HBO documentary series Eyes on the Prize III: We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest 1977-2015 and – a big and – she goes for an Oscar on March 2 for her short film I Am Ready, Warden, from MTV Documentary Films.

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On the new episode of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, Mundhra takes us inside the making of I Am Ready, Warden, which documents the final days of Texas death row inmate John Henry Ramirez. Mundhra interviewed the condemned man, captured the last conversation between Ramirez and his young son Izzy and – just as remarkably – revealed the emotional angst of Aaron Castro, the son of the man Ramirez was convicted of killing, as he counted down the final days and hours of Ramirez’s life.

I Am Ready, Warden is one of five nominees for Best Documentary Short, joining Death By Numbers, directed by Kim A. Snyder; Incident, directed by Bill Morrison; Instruments of a Beating Heart, directed by Ema Ryan Yamazaki; and The Only Girl in the Orchestra, directed by Molly O’Brien.

O’Brien’s documentary, streaming on Netflix, centers on the filmmaker’s aunt, Orin O’Brien, acclaimed as one of the greatest classical double bass players in the world. In the 1960s, she became the first woman hired full time for the New York Philharmonic – hence the film’s title.

O’Brien also joins our episode, explaining why it took 10 years to convince her aunt to agree to the documentary project. She also discusses the lessons Orin learned from observing the trajectory of her parents’ lives – two stars of Hollywood’s Golden Era who saw their names in lights only for the glow of fame to fade.

That’s on the latest edition of Doc Talk, hosted by Oscar winner John Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Matt Carey, Deadline’s documentary editor. The pod is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios.

Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.

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