Documentary filmmaker Kim Longinotto likes to let her films do the talking for her. Her movies take the viewer into often exotic worlds and capture intimate portraits of fascinating and often inspirational characters. Acclaimed past work includes Divorce Iranian Style (1998); Gaea Girls (2000), about female Japanese wrestlers; and Sisters In Law (2005), about Vera Ngassa and Beatrice Ntuba, a lawyer and judge working within Cameroon's eccentric legal system.

There's a dramatic change of scene for Kim's 2007 feature Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go, which focuses on pupils at the Mulberry Bush School, a boarding school which caters for children suffering severe emotional trauma. With her film premiering at BRITDOC, Kim talks about the challenges of making Hold Me Tight and other kids' stuff...

Tell us where the idea to make Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go came from...
I had no intention of making the film at all, but [producer] Roger Graef – who's on the board of trustees at the Mulberry Bush School – kept saying "Come with me to see this school". I thought, 'Well, it's only half a day and then Roger won't keep asking me to go...' And i just had an immediate reaction to the place.

The main reason I wanted to shoot there – and I hope it comes out in the film – is that when you go to Mulberry Bush, even for just a few hours, what strikes you is that when kids behave really badly, they're not punished. I thought about the school I went to, where you never got commended for anything and we were always in fear of being punished.

I also thought about our own culture and how a lot of families work and a lot of our institutions work, and the school seemed to be a metaphor for what's wrong with boys and young men in society. I'm sure that's why the impact of going to that school was so strong for me.

Did it take much persuasion on your part to receive permission to shoot at the school?
What happened is that Roger said "We've got permission", and I went to a meeting with the school's director and he said "It's all fine, everyone wants you to come." But when I started the film I gradually realised that none of the staff in control of the class really wanted the film made, and they felt that it had been pushed onto them.

Nothing's ever as simple as you think it's going to be, so it was then a question of starting from the beginning and winning their trust. Some of the staff I never won over, so I had to work out which staff were on my side and film those people. But that's what you always do – you film people who are happy being filmed and comfortable being filmed, because if somebody isn't, it looks horrible anyway.

I started shooting in September 2006 and then we had a horrible couple of months where the staff didn't really want to be filmed. We spent most of October away from the school and then we really filmed doggedly in November, December and January 2007, and that's when we got the film.

There's a fascinating moment when one of the schoolboys, Ben, mentions his awareness of you filming him...
Yes, I love that moment and we left it in on purpose. It was the only time he referred to me and Mary [Milton, sound recordist] as the film crew; he normally said "Kim and Mary". For me it seemed like an answer to people who say "How can you make this film? What about your responsibility to the children?" Because Ben says "I don't want to say this in front of the film crew", and [his carer] Matt says "But look, there'll be another little kid like you that doesn't have this school and is feeling very alone, and if they see this film maybe it will mean something to them." And Ben thought about it and that's when he said this thing: "My mum stabbed my dad."

According to the staff I asked, he hadn't actually told anyone that before. It's a very funny thing that seems to happen on every single film I make, that at some point in filming somebody will make a decision to say something they've never said before. For example, I was making a film in Kenya called The Day I'll Never Forget, about FGM [Female Genital Mutilation] and the social worker of this little girl said, "She hasn't talked about the marriage at all. She'll talk about the FGM but she won't talk about the marriage." And the girl looked at me and gave a little look to say 'Film this Kim', and she started talking about being sent to this husband and the marriage. The social worker was really shocked and afterwards said "She must have forgot you were filming." But she hadn't forgotten. I asked the girl and she said it was the right time: "I only wanted to say it once, and that was the right time to say it."

Did you meet the children initially without your camera in order to get to know them?
I never do that. I know some people do and I'm not saying it's not the right thing to do, but it just seems more honest if you're there with your camera – because you're there to make a film. Although having said that, one of the hardest things with this film was... I thought to myself, they're British kids, it's going to be really easy with the equipment, but they were the most obsessed with the equipment of anyone I've ever met. Almost every day they wanted to look through the camera or do something with the camera – they were very good at fiddling around with the knobs so that when you were filming things were not quite right!

On your previous film Sisters In Law, you literally landed in Cameroon without knowing what you were going to make a film about. Was it a similar experience on Hold Me Tight, or were you clear from the beginning what you wanted to make?
It was a really painful journey, actually, a very difficult journey. I discovered all sorts of things about myself that I'd rather not have known. I thought about my own family and my own school, and I thought because it was such a strong experience for me, I had to trust that other people would find similar things in it from their own stories.

To me, one of the most moving things was seeing men [the male teachers] being so loving with boys and so supportive; you got a glimpse of what fathers should be like. I can't ever remember my own father being like that but I felt really heartened by it because I thought, 'Well, those men will be like that with their children.'

You were shooting at the school for five months. Was the film difficult to edit together?
The edit was heaven! I worked with this guy called Ollie Huddlestone – I've worked with him on a few films now – and we'd both go out and cry together. He's got kids so he watched the film very much as a father, and he kept saying, "I've got to spend some more time with my boys!" It kept cutting him to the quick watching the film, which was lovely in a way.

There's something universal about children's school experiences, which presumably might help the film overseas. After all, cinema audiences flocked to see a French school in Être Et Avoir...
The producer Roger Graef wanted the film to be more like Être Et Avoir at the beginning, he wanted it to be set over a year. In a way Être Et Avoir is very visual, it's about the seasons and it's about a rural community, and the place is a personality almost as much as the kids. But I like the fact that this is tougher. What I love about these kids – and I think they've changed me for life – is that they're so smart. I love it when Alex says to Tim, "Oh, adults always get it wrong." When I was filming and he said that, I thought, 'That's what the whole film's about!' It's about adults getting it wrong and destroying kids, and how this place has to put them back again. Kids don't get to be that disturbed without adults having done something to them, and you're gradually finding out what's happened to them.

The film's screening at BRITDOC...
I'm really happy it's at BRITDOC, because this film was made in Oxford and so it seems spookily nice that its first screening is in Oxford. The only screening we've had before BRITDOC was a private screening to the staff at the Mulberry Bush school, and what I loved about that is that people were laughing and crying and there was a lot of noise all the way through. I'd like 12-year-olds to be in the audience, and see what kids make of it. They'll love the swearing!

Once the film has finished I like the focus to be on the people in it

You've made a lot of respected documentaries over the years but you maintain a very low profile...
I feel very much that once the film has finished I like the focus to be on the people in it. Like with Sisters In Law, the judge and state prosecutor have been going around with the film, and that feels really nice. When we showed the film in Amsterdam, I'll never forget it. The lights came up at the end of the film and there was polite applause for all the crew. And then when someone said Vera and Beatrice were in the audience, everyone stood up and cheered, and that was wonderful. I can imagine after Hold Me Tight, if they could see [teachers such as] Julie or Ricky or Tim, that would be absolutely amazing for them.

And do you think that will be possible?
I'm going to bully the teachers into going, but I think for them it was a really big thing being filmed. A lot of them had misgivings after all the things they've read about reality TV and that they were going to somehow be distorted and talked about. That's why we had the screening for them, and afterwards they came up and said, "You've shown my work, you've shown how I am, you've shown it truthfully," so I think they will go around with it. I'm just sad it took them so long to trust us.

Finally, how easy or difficult is it to raise the money for your documentaries?
I used to find it really difficult. With Divorce Iranian Style it took two years to get the money, and I probably will find it difficult again, but it depends what the subject is. It's very hard to raise money for films with subtitles, and also with the kind of films I make, it's quite hard to raise the money because you can't tell them what the story is. But I would be very suspicious of somebody who COULD tell me what the story was, because I would then think they were faking it. I couldn't have imagined kids as amazing as the kids I filmed in the Mulberry Bush, that's what I love about it. And I couldn't have imagined how deeply it would affect me and what a rollercoaster ride it would be making that film.

Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go is screening as part of BRITDOC 07 at Keble College, Oxford. The film will be shown on BBC TWO in 2008.

Adrian Hennigan | Published 25 July 07

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