GOOD TALK WITH TRACY DROZ TRAGOS

Tracy Droz Tragos is a writer, filmmaker, and mother of two, drawn to issues involving reproductive freedom, women, inequality, and rural America. At an early age, Tracy found solace in storytelling, watching Vietnam War movies and making a connection with the father she never knew, a U.S. Navy officer who died in Vietnam when she was a baby.

Tracy’s work includes Abortion: Stories Women Tell, the HBO documentary telling intimate stories of unplanned pregnancies, resilience and personal tragedy; Smartest Kids in the World, a documentary about the crisis in U.S. high school education, and Be Good, Smile Pretty, an Emmy Award-winning documentary about the grief and healing of survivors of the Vietnam War. With Rich Hill, Tracy embedded in the homes of low-income families in rural Missouri to give voice to the at-risk teenagers there. Among other awards, Rich Hill won the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Since then, Tracy has continued filming with these Missouri families with a focus on Sarah, whom Tracy met in 2012, who became pregnant at age 15 – and is now a mother of three.

With PLAN C, Tracy traveled America to cover the stories of a grassroots network fighting to expand access to abortion pills across the United States keeping hope alive during a global pandemic and the fall of Roe v. Wade - as well as the stories of people seeking their care.

Expertise
In addition to PLAN C, I spent over a year embedded in an abortion clinic just over Missouri state lines for ABORTION: STORIES WOMEN TELL. I have a wealth of experience on the ground, in and out of clinics, about access to abortion care. I am also in late-production on a film about a teenage mom - ten years in the making - from rural Missouri - and know the challenges, choices and obstacles she has faced.

Speaking History
Tracy is a Guggenheim and Sundance Fellow, a member of the Directors Guild of America, Producers Guild of America, Femme Fatales and Film Independent, She's a mentor to graduate students in the documentary program at Northwestern University and to high school students in underserved communities in Los Angeles through IFP’s Project Involve. She's also guest lectured about her work at the University of Southern California and at Harvard University.