{"id":160249,"date":"2025-11-19T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/11\/19\/b-c-filmmaker-brings-emmy-winning-dna-documentary-home\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:00:00","slug":"b-c-filmmaker-brings-emmy-winning-dna-documentary-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/11\/19\/b-c-filmmaker-brings-emmy-winning-dna-documentary-home\/","title":{"rendered":"B.C. filmmaker brings Emmy-winning DNA documentary home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Glenlyon Norfolk School will dim the lights Thursday night for a story that&rsquo;s been two decades in the making, and for Victoria filmmaker Niobe Thompson, it feels a bit like bringing a long, winding journey back home.<\/p>\n<p>Thompson will be at the school in the Victoria suburb of Oak Bay in person for a Q&#038;A and showing of his documentary, <em>Hunt for the Oldest DNA<\/em>, fresh off winning the 2025 Emmy Award for Best Science Documentary,<\/p>\n<p>He says the event will be a rare treat in a career where films often &ldquo;go out into the world&rdquo; without him ever meeting the people watching them.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lmlNaC7MTgY?si=HShAP3Eip72C9tqD\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;For a filmmaker, you can lose track of a film once it&rsquo;s released,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;To actually sit down with a real audience and see the impression your work makes is a rare and wonderful thing.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><em>Hunt for the Oldest DNA<\/em> follows Danish scientist Eske Willerslev, whom Thompson describes as &ldquo;a spectacularly interesting character, a driven, ambitious, flawed human being who really is one of the greatest living scientists today.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Thompson first met Willerslev when he was still a graduate student, long before the scientist became a global name in ancient DNA research.<\/p>\n<p>For years, he wanted to tell Willerslev&rsquo;s personal story, and the breakthrough that finally made it possible landed during a phone call about five years ago.<\/p>\n<p>Willerslev&rsquo;s long-running attempt to retrieve DNA from two-million-year-old Greenland sediment had become something of a legend in the scientific community.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It got this reputation as being a cursed project,&rdquo; Thompson said. &ldquo;People tried, failed, left science. He persevered.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>On that call, Willerslev told him it was finally working. The impossible was becoming possible.<\/p>\n<p>That was the moment Thompson began documenting a breakthrough 15 years in the making, ultimately crafting a film he says is &ldquo;at its heart, a portrait of a scientist.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>But it&rsquo;s also a window into the messy, uncertain process behind major discoveries.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Whenever you read about a big breakthrough, behind that is years of uncertainty, setbacks, hope without any certainty,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;These are human beings doing this work.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The film took four years of production, including extensive animation work by a Vancouver team tasked with turning complex DNA science into something audiences can understand.<\/p>\n<p>Thompson said he believes the clarity and creativity of those sequences are a big reason the documentary has connected so widely.<\/p>\n<p>Returning to GNS, a school his children attended, makes the screening especially meaningful.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I hope there are kids in the audience,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;This is a story about someone whose teachers never thought he&rsquo;d turn out to be a scientist, never mind a successful one. The most important quality he had was curiosity.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p><em>Hunt for the Oldest <\/em><em>DNA <\/em>screens at 7 p.m. at Denford Hall on Nov. 20. Tickets for Thursday&rsquo;s free screening <a href=\"https:\/\/ticketstripe.com\/events\/4470107977985364\" target=\"_blank\">must be reserved in <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/ticketstripe.com\/events\/4470107977985364\" target=\"_blank\">advance<\/a>, and Thompson says he&rsquo;s simply excited to share the film with the community that his family calls home.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s wonderful to be able to take science documentaries out into the community,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I hope lots of people come out.&rdquo;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hunt for the Oldest DNA &mdash; by Victoria filmmaker Niobe Thompson &mdash; was the 2025 winner of Best Science Documentary <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":160250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-regional-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>B.C. filmmaker brings Emmy-winning DNA documentary home - The Interior News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/11\/19\/b-c-filmmaker-brings-emmy-winning-dna-documentary-home\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"B.C. filmmaker brings Emmy-winning DNA documentary home - The Interior News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hunt for the Oldest DNA &mdash; by Victoria filmmaker Niobe Thompson &mdash; was the 2025 winner of Best Science Documentary\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/11\/19\/b-c-filmmaker-brings-emmy-winning-dna-documentary-home\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Interior News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-11-19T23:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"none\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"none\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/11\/19\/b-c-filmmaker-brings-emmy-winning-dna-documentary-home\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/11\/19\/b-c-filmmaker-brings-emmy-winning-dna-documentary-home\/\",\"name\":\"B.C. filmmaker brings Emmy-winning DNA documentary home - The Interior News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/11\/19\/b-c-filmmaker-brings-emmy-winning-dna-documentary-home\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/11\/19\/b-c-filmmaker-brings-emmy-winning-dna-documentary-home\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2025\/11\/40909118_web1_251119-OBN-EmmyWinningFilmmakeratGNS-DOC_1.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-11-19T23:00:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/#\/schema\/person\/8be4edca74839da05bc48ba285e538cc\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/11\/19\/b-c-filmmaker-brings-emmy-winning-dna-documentary-home\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/11\/19\/b-c-filmmaker-brings-emmy-winning-dna-documentary-home\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/2025\/11\/19\/b-c-filmmaker-brings-emmy-winning-dna-documentary-home\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2025\/11\/40909118_web1_251119-OBN-EmmyWinningFilmmakeratGNS-DOC_1.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/interior-news.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/16\/2025\/11\/40909118_web1_251119-OBN-EmmyWinningFilmmakeratGNS-DOC_1.jpg\",\"width\":1200,\"height\":800,\"caption\":\"Niobe Thompson&rsquo;s documentary Hunt for the Oldest DNA, fresh off an Emmy win, screens Nov. 20 at Glenlyon Norfolk School with the director in attendance for a post-film discussion. 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