Gabor Maté gave a filmmaker just 3 days to capture the story of his life

On a hot summer day in 2021, filmmaker Asher Penn found himself rummaging through the messy attic of a famous doctor and reading his childhood journals.

The then-39-year-old was gathering material for a feature-length documentary about Gabor Maté: the former Vancouver family doctor turned best-selling author who helped popularize a trauma-informed approach to treating addiction and other diseases.

Penn was granted access to Maté’s family films, diaries and photo albums. Among the treasures he found were jars of Super 8 film with footage from Maté’s youth and a childhood photo of Maté in Hungary wearing the red scarf of the communist youth movement. These artifacts help illustrate the dramatic political events that shaped Maté’s life and mind, and which the film, Physician, Heal Thyself, recounts in detail.

“It’s a complicated biographical documentary and it’s very homely,” Penn tells CBC Arts.

The project began in 2018 and premiered in 2023, when it won the Audience Award at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and is now playing at Vancouver’s VIFF Center until October 22.

The documentary draws heavily on archival footage and documents, black-and-white sketch animations, and three days of intimate interviews with Maté himself, a Jew born into the Nazi holocaust in 1944.

The result is an eclectic film that shows the ups and downs of a man who, after suffering early childhood trauma, spent his life questioning authority. From a man who worked long hours as a family doctor while neglecting relationships with his family, and who has struggled to value himself despite his professional success.

Product of one’s circumstances

The film’s format, Penn says, was dictated by circumstances. Not all of Maté’s family members wanted to be interviewed for the film, and opportunities to capture B-roll for the film were hampered by the COVID-19 lockdowns. The doctor was also particular about what he would and wouldn’t do.

“Gabor was very busy and didn’t want to be chased around by a documentary crew for a month or so.”

“We came up with the solution of making this film in a documentary style of Errol Morris, a single narrator, and he was willing to give us three days to tell his story and that’s what we did.”

For Penn, the project was personal. It was 2018 and he had been sober for six months. She had recently moved home to Vancouver after a decade and a half of living in New York and Los Angeles.

While he was in recovery, Penn says, someone had placed himself Into the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction in his hands, a book that creates connections between childhood trauma and addiction.

“(It) really helps people recognize that what they’re dealing with might not just be a personal moral shortcoming, there might be something more to it,” he says.

While integrating Maté’s teachings into his life, Penn became “obsessed” with the author and his works. He went through podcasts and articles to learn about Maté’s life, but he wasn’t satisfied with what he found. There were “gaps” in Maté’s biography, Penn says.

“If you go on YouTube, there are thousands of hours of him being interviewed, but most of them just focus on his ideas and theories. Not many people have really honed in on the biographical aspect,” he says.

Having already produced documentariesPenn saw an opportunity to fill those gaps. He began contacting Maté and his team to ask about directing a documentary about Maté’s life. And so the film begins: Penn leaves a voicemail for Maté, asking the doctor to call him back.

“No one would answer me,” says Penn.

Then one night over dinner, Penn says he mentioned his production difficulties to his father, who like Maté, is both Jewish and a doctor.

“He picked up the phone and said, ‘I’m just going to introduce you guys.’

Vulnerable admissions

When it came time to interview Maté, Penn asked some tough questions. The film includes a notable moment when Maté, while on camera, initially rejects one of Penn’s questions, only to capitulate a few breaths later.

“I’m not going to talk about it,” Maté says, clearly looking away from the camera. “You can ask, and we’ll see what I can say.”

To hear the story that follows is no small admission for a person held in such high regard by so many.

It’s a remarkable feat for a filmmaker who was about half his subject’s age at the time of the interviews.

“You have to imagine, this is someone you admire and respect, but who is also…for lack of a better word, intimidating.”

During his time with his subject, Penn says he came to appreciate how Maté, and others he has interviewed and admires, are often a product of their life circumstances. Penn said he learned that not only are their successes nearly impossible to replicate, but their lives aren’t always as bright as they seem.

“When I first started interviewing people I was sometimes a little envious of the subjects, and I wanted what they had … and I almost wanted to be who they were,” he says.

While Penn’s project spurred this personal growth, it threw a wrench into his recovery from addiction. After months of interviewing Maté, Penn says he relapsed.

“If you really want to get sober, what worked for me was to put recovery first, before everything else,” he says.

The gift of change

Documentary films often involve close collaboration between creators and subjects. For Penn’s film, special access to the subject and his life meant giving Maté a say in the final product, including the right to ask that certain things be clarified or corrected.

“It was always the intention to do something that would make Gabor and his family feel good,” says Penn.

Ultimately, Penn says, Maté’s vulnerability gave him the material to create a compelling story for the screen.

“It’s a real blessing to be able to work with someone like Gabor who is constantly, in a constant state of self-discovery. So much of her life and so much of her narrative is starting out believing one thing and realizing another the other side.”

“What’s really generous about him is his willingness to admit that, because a lot of people really think it’s a great show of strength to be exactly the same all the time and never, ever change.”

Physician, Heal Thyself is now showing at the VIFF Center in Vancouver until October 22nd