The Quiet Diplomat (2024, in post-production)

Documentary (70 mins), produced by Bright Leaf Pictures and Cinema for Peace in association with Star Entertainment GmbH

Director: Charles Lyons

Producers: Susan Lee MacDonald, Charles Lyons

Senior Executive Producer: Chaim Litewski

Editor: Tamiris Lourenco, edt.

Written by: Tamiris Lourenco, edt. and Charles Lyons

Music: Marion Lemonnier, Woody Pak, Flavia Tygel

Executive Producers: James Yoon, Michael B. Kim, Jaka Bizilj

Logline: The Quiet Diplomat centers on former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The UN saved his life during the Korea War, inspiring him to become a man of peace. During two terms as the 8th Secretary General, Ban discovers the challenges of international diplomacy in an increasingly splintered world.

Why now? Globally, war and authoritarianism are on the rise. In this film, we see how Ban’s ‘quiet diplomacy’ is a reassertion of the importance of multilateralism, represented by the UN, at a time when collaboration between countries is key for our survival as a species.

Status: We are planning to screen the film for friends and family in December 2024 in NYC.

Along with his family, “SG” Ban was displaced during the Korean War. The UN Command fought on the side of South Korea and forever changed Ban’s life, inspiring him to become a man who fought for peace. Nearly fifty years later, Ban was selected as the 8th Secretary General of the UN. During ten years (two terms), in one of the toughest jobs in the world, “SG” Ban discovered the challenges of international, UN-led diplomacy in an increasingly splintered world.

Globally, war and authoritarianism are on the rise. In The Quiet Diplomat, we see Ban’s ‘quiet diplomacy’ as one strategy to promote multilateralism at a time when collaboration between countries is a key to our survival.

Approach: This documentary is intimate, evocative, empathetic, and emotional–– about a man who not only achieved change in the world, but also followed his passions, charting a bold, original path in the face of criticism. But we see this film as much broader than the transformational arc of a single man’s life: Ban was born one year earlier than the UN; his life is a time capsule of a period in history marked by a brutal clash between multinational and unilateralist approaches to governing. The film also probes the value of an institution that grew out of the ashes of World War II, when there was one world order, to what it is today, when that world order has changed.

The film benefits from hours of UN footage, much of it never publicly seen, as well as footage shot by news organizations during a tumultuous decade while Ban led the UN. Chief among our goals is to use this trove, and fresh interviews, to reveal a man many people don’t know at all, or think they know.

While our approach is not combative, we do not shy from controversy, asking tough questions about what the UN can and should do to handle increasingly difficult global crises, including new wars, while giving Ban the opportunity to assess his accomplishments and failures during his ten years at the UN.

Interviewees:

Ban Ki-Moon, 8th Secretary General of the UN Yoo Soon-Taek, his wife

Juan Manual Santos, former President of Colombia

Mark Malloch Brown, President, Open Society Foundations

Beatrice Lindstrom, Senior Clinical Instructor, Harvard Law School

Richard Haass, President Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations

Rajon Menon, Spitzer Professor of International Relations, Emeritus, City College of New York

Jean Krasno, Lecturer, Dept. of Political Science, CCNY/ Columbia University

Lina Khatib, Director, SOAS Middle East Institute

Richard Gowan, UN Director, International Crisis Group