Israel Adesanya and Zoe McIntosh during filming for Stylebender. Photo / Sara Hewson
Israel Adesanya and Zoe McIntosh during filming for Stylebender. Photo / Sara Hewson
Zoe McIntosh had a vision.
In 2019, the Kiwi film director met with UFC star Israel Adesanya for dinner to discuss the potential of working together on Adesanya’s documentary. The two bonded over their mutual love of dancing and creativity, and, while she was not a mixed martial arts fan at the time and only knew of Adesanya at the surface level, but she was fascinated by the opportunities to explore a complex character.
“Here was this extremely charismatic, little bit controversial fella in an extremely macho world, but he was talking about being in touch with his feminine side, going to see a therapist and exploring his vulnerability,” McIntosh tells the Herald.
“I was immediately hooked and curious to get to know him more.”
McIntosh had been approached by producer Fraser Brown of Fluroblack about the project, and the pair met with Adesanya’s coach Eugene Bareman at Auckland’s City Kickboxing gym to discuss it.
For Bareman, it was the right fit and when McIntosh finally sat with Adesanya to discuss her vision, she shared her desire to create a film that would speak to an audience beyond UFC fans; one with, as she puts it, a “feminine lens on it.” Rather than presenting just another sports documentary, McIntosh wanted the viewers to see another side of the two-time middleweight champion; to see all sides of an entertaining, complicated and “deeply flawed” character.
With the film Stylebender now in theatres, the director admits had no idea what she had signed up for.
Director Zoe McIntosh during filming for Stylebender. Photo / Sara Hewson
“There was so much content,” she laughs. “If I knew I would probably rewrite my contract because there was so there was so much archive.”
Since 2015, Adesanya has been working with American filmmaker Jeff Sainlar to document his career in combat sports. Sainlar has tailed Adesanya around the globe, shooting fights and all that goes with them, from intense training camps to intimate moments behind the scenes.
It was a true treasure trove of content for McIntosh to sift through, though doing so was a tall task.
“It was Covid and I remember it felt like - and it probably was - months of just going through endless footage. And I just remember that I wasn’t at the time a UFC fan, so it was stacks of just in the gym fighting and I was just like, ‘Oh my God.’
“However, there were some really incredible moments between Izzy and Eugene and his family; this amazing family archive, so to have that in the feature film, it’s a gift.
“You’ve got to go through all that stuff, and then occasionally there would just be these absolute cracker moments that I could grab that were fiercely entertaining. So, it was such a privilege to have all that footage.”
That career footage is well interspersed throughout the documentary among the more cinematic elements; with Adesanya’s work in therapy a recurring presence in the film, while some of the more emotional themes are brought home with footage of Adesanya dancing.
It’s a film that not only documents the life and times of one of the country’s biggest stars, but is delivered in a way that also delivers other themes such as embracing your personality, and challenging what it means to be masculine.
“My producers were really good at backing my vision and they were really great at supporting me wanting to bring the therapist in. Because it’s a sports documentary, that probably sounded quite fruity to them.
“You are just getting such a deep understanding of Israel through her therapy. Instead of sitting down and having those kind of boring interview questions from a director to talent, you’ve got it all unfolding in such a deep way in front of your eyes. That’s cool.”
The film premiered as part of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, and was met with immediate plaudits as it was nominated for best documentary and McIntosh was nominated for best director.
But beyond that, McIntosh says the feedback from those who have seen the film has been overwhelming. She says she has regularly gotten messages from filmgoers expressing how much they took from the film and some even telling her they were going to look into going to therapy themselves after being influenced by the documentary.
“It’s incredible,” she says of the response so far.
“I didn’t quite know that that was going to go down. But I genuinely feel like it’s resonating with a lot of people and that’s all you want as a director after so many years working on it.”
“You take a big leap when you make a documentary because you really have no idea. It’s scary and there’s risk, but I had a good feeling about this.
“He’s a great character, he’s super entertaining, and he’s really deep. It was just such a delicious combination, and I think that’s why the film is working.
“He’s complex and complicated and he’s deeply flawed, and we see that in the film.”
