During the most recent Ebola crisis, Esquire interviewed Ric about the making of Ebola: Inside an Outbreak/Plague Fighters.
Twenty years ago, documentary filmmaker Ric Esther Bienstock raced across continents to cover a massive Ebola outbreak in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In an age before digital cameras and widespread Internet and cell phone usage, she toiled for long weeks alongside a battery of international doctors and a gaggle of news media that wasn't as keen to get their hands dirty as she was. The resulting film, the award-winningEbola: Inside An Outbreak, has been shown world-wide and become a part of PBS' Nova series, and is perhaps the most intense and personal look at the sort of outbreak that is happening today. We talked to her about what it was like to be so close to so much death, and how much—or little—the situation has changed from then to now.
