S3 Ep3 Diving deeper into the making of Conquering Breast Cancer

🎥 Curious about the filmmaking process? Get a sneak peek into the making of the Conquering Breast Cancer documentary film and the vital conversations surrounding breast cancer.

I'm your host Sue Collins and in this episode I'm picking up on the behind-the-scenes of making a documentary and sharing insights on audience building and how to connect with viewers on a sensitive topic like breast cancer. 

Did you know that breast cancer risk can be influenced by family history and genetics? And that being at high risk can be different for each woman. 

Meet inspiring women like Dyna and Rachel, who bravely share their stories and questions about breast cancer risk and prevention.

There are so many factors that go into making a documentary film and this episode reveals a little more of the process to help you with making your own films.  And if you're here because you're interested in learning more about breast cancer. Then there's loads in here for you too.

Disclaimer: The information shared in this podcast is not medical advice and you should always consult with trusted medical professional for any medical concerns you have.

There is a resource page on the www.conqueringcancercampaign.com website with links to credible websites for more information and support services for breast cancer. 

If you're interested in seeing Conquering Breast Cancer on the silver screen in Australia from June 2026 - you can book tickets at https://conqueringcancercampaign.com/conquering-breast-cancer-au/

This episode includes comments from incredible people featured in Conquering Breast Cancer: Dyna Eldaief, Pratika Lal, Professor Bruce Mann, Professor Kelly-Anne Phillips, Rachel Lawlor and Lyn Swinburne.  

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_06 0:00

While you're listening to this podcast, please be aware that nothing I say and that nothing that any of the guests on this podcast or excerpts of their interviews is intended to be medical advice. Please always seek advice from your trusted medical professional and listen to this podcast, but no, it is not medical advice. Enjoy. Welcome back to the Documentary Filmmaker podcast featuring the Conquering Breast Cancer Documentary. I'm your host, Sue Collins. Lugging gear around funding applications, mastering social media. It's all in a day of the life of a documentary filmmaker, and you might think it's a specialist job, but you really are a jack of all trades when you run your own show. Now, if you've just found this series, then the last couple of episodes covered a bit of ground that you can easily jump back to after this episode. So to recap on what's been happening before we got to this point, episode one was the start of a case study revealing the inner workings of developing a documentary, and it covered origins, you know, how conquering breast cancer came to be, and we covered how to develop a clear concept. And you also had an opportunity to meet Dinah L. Dave, the first cab off the rank, and also the person responsible for setting the documentary wheels in motion.

SPEAKER_03 1:34

I felt like I didn't know much about my family and my extended family, and if anything, ran in the family, so I I'd sort of got my mum to ask around. And it just seemed to me to be too many to just sort of be a chance thing.

SPEAKER_06 1:50

Then we got into a deeper dive in episode two into research and development, you know, things like how to find the story you can't let go of. And for conquering breast cancer, that's the story of the pink cancer and the women impacted by it. But how to tell the story. We met Pratika Lull, two-time cancer survivor, and a force to be reckoned with.

SPEAKER_05 2:15

And I'm so proud of my family because we're so bloody close to each other, and we just keep getting up and going, yeah, no, whatever, you know, bring it on, you know, we'll just cut the next limb off.

SPEAKER_06 2:26

Both episodes are packed with details and ideas and a useful reference for anyone getting started in a documentary world or interested in breast cancer. So on a side note, I have to ask, were you one of those kids who made your parents groan and say, Please stop asking so many questions? Or if you say why again, I might lose my mind. Well, it'll be no surprise to you that I was that kid, and uh, I think that's what set me up for being a documentary filmmaker. Always curious and always got questions. What are we going to explore now? See? Another question. Well, we finished off last episode with some comments from Professor Bruce Mann, who at the time when I met him was the director of breast cancer services for the Royal Melbourne and Royal Women's Hospital. And there are two burning questions on my mind. Dinah was exploring what it means to be at high risk to develop breast cancer. And Pratika shared the reality of having survived breast cancer. But what are the factors that determine risk? And what do you do if you find out you're at higher than average risk? Because let's face it, all Aussie women have a 1 in 7 risk, and women in the USA have a 1 in 8 lifetime risk. But what if your risk is even higher than the average, say greater than 20 or 30% lifetime risk? That's what Dinah was facing. And in a strange turn of events, it also turns out that I have a higher than average risk as well. But at this point 10 years ago, I was completely unaware of that. So I asked Dinah what her options were now that she was aware she was at high risk.

SPEAKER_07 4:26

So moving into the preventative area, which is sort of where we're picking up on your story, I guess, um, it'd be good to sort of talk through what options you're exploring.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

Well, um, interestingly, the last appointment I had um, and I got an all-clear at the time that was uh last year, um they mentioned going on hormone therapy, and that was uh preventative um treatment for high-risk women. It's um tamoxifen, which is usually given to women who already have had breast uh breast cancer, and then it gives a sort of um f um five years of sort of cover, if you if that makes sense, um protection. So I mentioned that as um probably the time to do that for me now because that would give me, you know, you do it for sorry, you take the tamoxipant for five years and then it gives you another sort of 10 years cover. So the the five years that you have it, and then that extra time. And that would take me to general population age. And so if I haven't had it by then, then I'm back into the the general population. I think that was the idea. But I had some questions around that because I thought, well, even if I was just at the population age where routine screening was done, age age 50, um, wouldn't I still be in the higher risk? Because my mother developed both hers just over 50. Um, my cousins had um cancers younger than her, but her sister had it older. Um yeah, so I thought, oh well, yeah, I'm not sure if that really means that once I hit 50, I'm just out there with the general population and that wouldn't lower my risk after that age. So I've been wondering whether something more definitive would be better. Um so I've looked into mastectomies. Of course, you mentioned Angelina Joly.

SPEAKER_06 6:29

Let's pause there. If you missed step one, then I did mention Angelina Joly because she was very public in disclosing she was carrying a BRACA-1 gene mutation and undergoing a preventative bilateral mastectomy. It sparked what researchers and clinicians now call the Angelina Joly effect, a measurable sustained increase in genetic testing, cancer screening, and awareness worldwide. So thank you, Angelina. You did a great service for women right across the globe. And it's not lost on me that Angelina Joly famously starred in a movie called Girl Interrupted, which I think would be a brilliant title for a film on breast cancer and what I have learned from breast cancer survivors. But obviously, Girl Interrupted was a name that was taken, and I am still lamenting that. But anyway, I digress. Let's get back to Dinah.

SPEAKER_03 7:27

And that um has been a fairly recent thing. So it it has made it more of a I don't know, something to consider. Um, whereas in the past I thought I've I've put it off because I've always wanted kids, and that's what I would do first, but now I'm I'm reconsidering um vasectomies and perhaps researching that a bit more as an option.

SPEAKER_07 7:53

Do you feel like there's um many places to go for help or advice or other women to talk to about those kinds of things?

SPEAKER_03 8:00

Um no, look, I I think there's a lot of um still a lot of unknowns. There's a lot of people who don't talk about these things. Um I think cancer, the word cancer is really scary to a lot of people. Um they might know someone who's had it or have experienced it in the family, but we we just don't talk about it. Um experiences or what happened in their families or our families, or we just don't talk about it. I remember even within my own family when my mum had cancer, we didn't sit down and talk about how she felt or what she was going through so much, or it was just what's happening next.

SPEAKER_06 8:36

So you can hear from that excerpt from Dinah's interview some 10 years ago that there was a lot she was exploring with regard to prevention, and even though at this point Dinah had a good deal of information, there were still a lot of questions. Questions to explore and answer because a lot of women would also have these same questions. And it was around this time I also met Rachel, who was then in her 20s and aware of her strong family history and potential BRACA gene mutation that could put her at high risk for breast cancer. She was struggling with a lot of the same questions that Dinah had.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

So my grandmother had breast cancer twice and she passed away, so she was very sick leading up to it. It was pretty awful. Before she got sick the final time, my mum got tested for the breast cancer gene, which came back positive. And so she had a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy. I will get tested one day. In terms of why I haven't gotten tested yet, I still I still feel like I'm quite young. I don't know if that's true anymore. But I don't think sort of previously I've been ready for that information. Because I, if I got tested and I was positive, I would have a double mastectomy like my mum did and a hysterectomy. So I'm not ready to do that yet, obviously, because I haven't had kids.

SPEAKER_06 10:04

Around this time in the process, along with the burning questions, I was also trying to get my head around who would be interested in seeing a film like this. Who is the core audience for this film? And this is really important to figure out because connecting with the audience is crucial for the film's ability to cut through and understanding who the audience is will also help shape the narrative of the film. It's also a question every single funding application you ever submit and every potential funder is going to ask you, especially foundations, charities, and corporate companies. Does your project overlap with the audience that they have and are the key messages aligned? So was this film conquering breast cancer for all women? Or is it only for Australian women? Is it only for women who are at higher than average risk? Is it women's families and friends? Is it health providers and oncologists? Well, frankly, with breast cancer rates as high as they are, it should really be something that everybody would want to know more about. And this is where it gets interesting because when I tell people I'm working on a film about breast cancer, they are either very interested or they switch off or make a remark like, ooh, that sounds a bit full on, or that's scary, or isn't that a bit sad or depressing? So how would people who switch off from the topic within seconds feel about seeing a film on breast cancer? And my guess is they wouldn't go to a cinema to watch it. So this film is not for them. And it's actually really helpful to eliminate people out of your audience because it helps you to target on who would see it. It's kind of like understanding people's perception of risk. For some women, having seen family members experience breast cancer, it can make them feel like their chance of developing breast cancer is inevitable. So when they find out that their personal risk is one in four or twenty five percent, they actually feel relieved as this seems lower than they perceived their risk to be. And that was the case for Dina's sister, Donna.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

I actually thought it was low initially. Um I thought, oh, 24%, that's all right. I thought I was gonna be 60 or 70%. Um and then they said they explained that um the general walking population of low-risk women are between um zero and twelve. The high low risk categories from twelve to eighteen, and the um moderate is from eighteen to twenty four, and high is from twenty five to thirty. So actually, we are high moderate now.

SPEAKER_06 13:03

But for another woman to find out her risk is 25% may be devastating and much higher than she'd ever thought. It's kind of like pitching a film on breast cancer. Some people would never want to go and see it, and others would embrace the opportunity. You just don't know.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

There are a number of factors that we know about that do identify a woman at high risk. So, what are the factors? Being female and being older are the main risk factors for developing breast cancer. Having a family history, particularly multiple members, close relatives, particularly if they developed cancer when they were young. We know that uh having certain findings on a previous breast biopsy, uh, it's cause it's atypical features if the cells are a bit abnormal but not cancerous. That is a risk for further uh for breast cancer. Heavy alcohol intake is associated with an increased risk. Weight gain, particularly um uh after uh later in life, uh, weight gain is associated with uh an increased risk. Having children, having had children, particularly early, is protective. So women who've had multiple children, particularly if they're breastfed, on average their risk of breast cancer is lower. Physical fitness being fit uh does seem to be a somewhat protective uh density as well as being a masking uh it masks can mask breast cancers, uh, high density is associated with an increased risk. So the woman with high density plus some other factors, um she's both at increased risk, and the standard test that we use is less sensitive. They're the group we need to identify and work out how to offer more sensitive screening.

SPEAKER_06 15:05

So ultimately, we decided that this story needs to be told to women who have already been touched by breast cancer, either themselves or their loved one and their families. Breast cancer is one of those topics that has a way of uniting people. It creates communities and the movement is really strong. Think about all the fundraising and awareness raising walks and runs, pink buns, dragon boatings, dragons the breast ladies, and so many others. And it's quite actually quite remarkable and really warming just how strong the breast cancer communities are. I'd learned a lot at this point, but the key learning was sadly that although survival rates for breast cancer had increased dramatically in recent years, with 90% of early breast cancer survivors being alive at five years, which is actually up from 75% back in 1991, so huge progress. But there are still up to 30% of women who go on to develop metastatic breast cancer or what some people call advanced breast cancer. It was estimated that 3,313 women and 40 men would die from breast cancer in Australia in 2025. So my mind turned to how to tell this story so that it could be hopeful and not too scary to take on board. My curiosity was driving a lot of the research to this point. But were my questions the same as other women's questions? What would the audience for this film want to know about? Would they want to know how to find out about their personal risk? Would they want to know where to find information? What do you do if you're at high risk? What happens if you get breast cancer? What sort of treatments do women get? And by the way, if this is bringing up questions for you personally, then head to the resource page on ConqueringBreast Cancer.com for links to credible places you can find a lot more information. I am not a medical professional, and what I'm sharing with you is what I've been learning and not any kind of medical advice. So please always talk to your preferred health professional or for any kind of medical advice. So the key point on audiences is that every person you pitch your film idea to will ask, who's your audience? And increasingly, participants we approach to be part of our films ask it too. So the long and the short of it is that you need to figure this out. And if you want to go into more depth on this and some case studies, you could jump back to episode 74 and listen to a bit more on audience building. But heading back over to breast cancer now. What do you do if you find out you are at high risk? And how do you find that out? I spoke to Professor Kelly Ann Phillips from Peter Mac here in Melbourne.

SPEAKER_04 18:14

I think the other question you asked was about what is high risk? To some extent, you can define it any way you like, and it is really important to define it. And that's why I find using the numbers helpful because if I say to you you're at high risk of breast cancer, you might understand that in a different way from how I mean it. So Cancer Australia defines uh defines three risk categories for breast cancer, average or slightly above average risk. So that's for women who are at uh less than one and a half times the population risk, um moderate risk, which is for women between one and a half and three times the population risk. And then high risk is defined as women who are at above three times the population risk. So that's one way of defining those terms. Um other people and groups mean different things when they say high risk. So, you know, that's an important point. When you hear the words high risk, you need to drill down on well, what do you actually mean by high risk? Because some people just mean increased risk as opposed to high risk, as I've just defined high risk. The future has not already been written, and there are things that we can do to change or potentially change that future story for women, and that's the really important point to make, I think.

SPEAKER_06 19:37

So, what I've learned about risk is that having a family history of breast cancer or having a gene mutation like BRCA1 or BRCA2, and they're currently finding a lot more genes that play a part in this, but those can put a woman into a high risk category for developing breast cancer. This was also 10 years ago, and it's really remarkable how much has been learned over that time about breast cancer and personal risk. And we now know that breast density also plays a part in breast cancer risk. And this is where my personal risk went from being slightly elevated due to a family history to being at higher risk due to a D grade breast density. And I'm gonna say, being told that you're a D-grade's a little bit confronting because I don't aim to be a D at anything. So, and my breasts have certainly never been a D-grade, but turns out that they are. But more to come on this. Remember, we're in the beginnings of this documentary's origins, so we're still back way in 2016. And I was very busy trying to work out how to finance this film, and I've talked about this before, you know, show me the money. So far, no luck. And we were working on this on the smell of an oily rag, and this is ultimately what stalled the film for some years. Hence, we're talking about what was going on in 2016. Poor Dinah, who we had been following on her journey, that you met back in episode one, she must have all but given up on me by this time. When I called her with the news that we'd finally secured some finance, it was seven years since we first met and started filming. I don't think she believed me. But the show must go on, and timing is everything. So I think when we first set out to tell this story, the timing just wasn't right. Breast cancer wasn't, you know, doing my air quotes here, it wasn't a trending topic, so to speak, because there was this sense that, you know, breast cancer had all been done. A lot of people think that breast cancer's been done now. Tick it off, move on. But we knew this story was important, so we never let it go. And like Woody Allen said, 80% of success is turning up. So we had that. But what next? How are we gonna get this over the line? I know, I know. I've killed the Jeopardy here because I've already told you that it's going into Australian cinemas next month. So you already know that we get there in the end, but you might be intrigued by the how, and we definitely had some more hoops to jump through. So that's what I'm gonna dig into in the next episode. How do you get a film across the line and how do you find a good story? You know, how do you find the participants for films like this? So you've been listening to the Documentary Filmmaker podcast, and I'm Sue Collins. And until next episode, happy filmmaking. And as I mentioned before, if anything in this episode has concerned you about your personal health and you need any information or resources on breast cancer, you can head to the resources page on www.conqueringcancercampaign.com or conquering breastcancer.com for links to credible sites with relevant information. Because remember, I'm sharing what I have been learning on my journey, but what I'm sharing is not medical advice and should not be considered medical advice of any sort. So please always speak with your own trusted health professional for medical advice. And if you're in Australia and you want to see the finished film Conquering Breast Cancer, so excited, head to conquering cancercampaign.com or conquering breastcancer.com to book tickets. Hopefully, I'll see you in the cinema.