The key to making a documentary that will appeal to mainstream viewers is to tell a good story. Maybe this sounds obvious,
but you'd be surprised how many documentarians seem to think their only job is to regurgitate a bunch of fly-on-the-wall footage and call it a day. "Sister Helen" tells a story. If it weren't 100 percent true, it would be perfectly acceptable as fiction. It has a beginning, middle and end, and the protagonist is a fiery, larger-than-life character. Real life, it turns out, CAN be interesting. Sister Helen is a former alcoholic who became a Benedictine nun after the deaths of her husband and sons. Now she runs a half-way house for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics in the South Bronx, operating on principles of tough love, strict curfews, random urine tests (she pronounces it "yur-EEN") and a vocabulary far more colorful than Maria Von Trapp ever used.
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