He Named 
Me Malala 

Documentary · Fox Searchlight

Malala Yousafzai’s childhood is mostly unfilmed. Swat Valley before the Taliban arrived. Her mother's one day at school. Her grandfather preaching in a mosque. And Malalai of Maiwand, the girl she is named after, who climbed a hill in Afghanistan more than a century ago and spoke to a losing army. Twenty-three minutes of the film is animation, and the film opens with it.

These memories were described to us, not documented, so the animation had to feel like remembering rather than like a record. Pastel, impressionistic, with the detail deliberately held back: enough to know where you are, not so much that it becomes an illustration. When Zia says his father spoke as though he were breathing fire, the words are made of fire. Malalai's words turn to light. And when Malala and her father step up to speak, the animation is about the act of stepping up.

Animated documentary is ordinary now. In 2013 it wasn't, and three months went into finding the style, much of that spent convincing the people funding the film that animation could carry someone’s memory for so much of the film. The job came out of a pitch against a number of studios, most of them more established than me. I didn’t have a studio then, so we built one for it: fifteen to twenty people in a separate part of the Davis’s building in Venice. It was the first documentary I ever worked on, and the first team I’d led on a film.

88 minutes · 23 min of animation · 2015

Poster for He Named Me Malala: Malala Yousafzai, in a red headscarf, stands before a setting sun as book pages fan out behind her and fly off like birds. The tagline reads “One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world”

"The way they spoke, their memories felt like a storybook to me."

— Davis Guggenheim, director · SHOOT

Pakistan's Swat Valley: simple stone houses and a domed building climb a green hillside beneath misty mountains, with colorful washing hanging on a line in the foreground — He Named Me Malala.

Three months

Concept

A young Ziauddin Yousafzai, Malala's father, stutters as a group of boys bully him at school — He Named Me Malala.
Grown up and running his own school, Ziauddin listens as a father complains about him teaching his daughter — He Named Me Malala.
Clouds roll over the green mountains of Afghanistan where the Battle of Maiwand was fought — He Named Me Malala.
Malalai of Maiwand, in red, runs toward the fight as soldiers retreat around her — He Named Me Malala.
A soldier falls from his horse in a dark smear of motion during the Battle of Maiwand — He Named Me Malala.
Shoes lie scattered outside the doorway of a mosque — He Named Me Malala.
A narrow, shadowed staircase climbs toward the light on Malala's secret walk to school — He Named Me Malala.
An early ink sketch of the Swat Valley, a river winding between snowy slopes — He Named Me Malala.
A color sketch of the Swat Valley, a village nestled among green fields beneath the mountains — He Named Me Malala.
Empty wooden desks fill a pale, sunlit classroom at Ziauddin's school — He Named Me Malala.
A quiet street in a Swat Valley town, power lines running toward distant mountains — He Named Me Malala.
Malalai stands on a mountaintop, calling down to the soldiers below — He Named Me Malala.

The studio we built

Behind the Scenes
15 people, in a room down the hall.

Just enough to know where you are

Background Paintings

Ziauddin's school: a plain white building with a blue door stands among shopfronts on a Swat Valley street, a ladder propped beside it and a bare tree behind — He Named Me Malala.
A pale, sunlit classroom with chairs scattered beneath a tall window — He Named Me Malala.
Malala's bedroom at home in deep blue shadow: a wooden dresser with a mirror and a few belongings, and a chair draped with a white scarf — He Named Me Malala.
The sun sets over the Swat Valley as a single light glows among the village houses in the blue dusk — He Named Me Malala.
A dim classroom at Ziauddin's school: rows of wooden desks face an open doorway, with light spilling in from the hall and a blackboard on the wall — He Named Me Malala.

Painted from memory

Final Frames

A child stands on a chair to speak as classmates and Ziauddin listen, learning to find their voice — He Named Me Malala.
On her first and only day of school, Malala's mother as a young girl stands among the boys in a sunny schoolyard — He Named Me Malala.
In a white headscarf, Malala's mother sits among the boys at their lessons on her only day of school — He Named Me Malala.
Ziauddin's school, ready to open, as its sign goes up above the blue door — He Named Me Malala.
Ziauddin's classroom at night, lit from outside as he works on the electricity on the pole beyond the window — He Named Me Malala.
The pale interior courtyard of Ziauddin's school, a blossoming tree beside its arches — He Named Me Malala.
Young girls' hands, patterned with henna, rise to answer a question — He Named Me Malala.
Empty desks sit in the dark after the school was closed — He Named Me Malala.
Children learn in Ziauddin's school as a boy writes on the board — He Named Me Malala.
The two armies move toward each other across a dusty plain beneath storm clouds at the Battle of Maiwand — He Named Me Malala.
Ziauddin's father, a preacher, delivers a fiery sermon in the mosque as light bursts above the crowd — He Named Me Malala.
Ziauddin holds baby Malala in the lit window of their home at night — He Named Me Malala.
Malala looks out through a hole blasted in the wall by an artillery shell, light pouring in — He Named Me Malala.
Seen through the hole in the wall, their town lies in ruins beneath the mountains — He Named Me Malala.
Malalai of Maiwand, in red, stands on a mountaintop to speak to the soldiers below — He Named Me Malala.
Malalai's words turn to flowing script of light across the sky, inspiring the soldiers below — He Named Me Malala.
Malalai carries the flag into battle beside the soldiers she inspired — He Named Me Malala.

Breathing fire

Full Sequence

“The film opens with a beautiful animated sequence recounting the legend of the young woman for whom Malala was named.”

The Hollywood Reporter

“The marvelous effect of the animation is to take us inside Malala’s head, so that we might see the Swat Valley as she saw it as a child.”

LA Times

Credits

Director
Davis Guggenheim

Animation Supervisor
Jason Carpenter

Production Designer
Jason Carpenter

Animation Producer
Irene Kotlarz

Concept Design
David Navas · Leah Chun

Animation
Song E. Kim · Sean Buckelew · Natalya Serebrennikova, Grace-Nayoon Rhee · Asavari Kumar · Jonathan Seligson

Backgrounds & Color Design
Leah Chun · Natalya Serebrennikova

Compositing
Jess Idlehart · Jason Carpenter · Quique Rivera · Meejin Hong

Producers
Walter Parkes · Laurie MacDonald · Davis Guggenheim

Production
Image Nation Abu Dhabi · Participant Media

Distribution
Fox Searchlight Pictures (theatrical) · National Geographic (broadcast)


World Premiere
Telluride Film Festival, 2015


Awards

Emmy Award
Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation (Juried) · Jason Carpenter, Production Design · 2016


Nominations

Annie Award
Outstanding Achievement, Production Design in an Animated Feature · Jason Carpenter · 2016

BAFTA
Best Documentary · Davis Guggenheim, Laurie MacDonald, Walter Parkes · 2016

Critics' Choice
Best Documentary Feature · 2016


Shortlisted

Academy Award, Best Documentary Feature · 2016

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