With mega-hits such as “My Heart Will Go On” — the theme from James Cameron’s 1997 DGA Award-winning blockbuster, Titanic — Céline Marie Claudette Dion’s voice made her a star. Director Irene Taylor’s (Hear and Now, The Final Inch) new documentary, I Am: Celine Dion, brings her back to Earth, in a raw and honest behind-the-scenes look at Dion’s struggle with Stiff Person Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder characterized by progressive muscular rigidity and stiffness.
Taylor’s film takes viewers on a journey inside the Canadian singer’s past and present and the lengths she has gone to continue performing for her beloved and loyal fans despite her life-altering illness. “I think I was very good,” Dion says about her career in a moving scene from the film. Cutting through cliché with an earnest and open closet of vulnerability, I Am: Celine Dion is a moving portrait of resilience, proving that Dion will go on.
On August 1, after the Special Projects Committee Documentary Series screening in Los Angeles, Taylor discussed the making of the film during a Q&A moderated by Special Projects Documentary Series Subcommittee Chair Ondi Timoner (Last Flight Home).
During the conversation Taylor spoke about the sensitivities involved in tackling Dion’s illness in the film and the accommodations she made to do so.
“This is the power of documentary. What are the chances that a one-in-a-million performer would get a one-in-a-million disease? The mathematicians in the room might be able to tell me that probability. It's very low. I realized that there was something horrific and precious at the same time happening, in terms of being with her at this time in her life where she wasn't distracted by a tour but by something that was completely consuming her on a day-to-day basis. For us, a typical day would be filming three hours of therapy and learning she doesn't want to wear a lavalier, we should just use a boom mic. And that's where I decided to be the sound girl.”
Taylor’s other directorial credits include the documentary features Trees, and Other Entanglements, Leave No Trace, Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements, Beware the Slenderman and the Peabody Award-winning Hear and Now. Taylor became a DGA member in 2020.