Interview with the director of Gaslit an explosive documentary

GASLIT - 2026 Santa Barbara Film Festival

Interview by Emmanuel Itier

Featuring and executive produced by Jane Fonda, ‘GASLIT’ (www.gaslitdoc.com  ) is a “tour de force” documentary directed by the maverick filmmaker, Katie Camosy. This film exposes the atrocities caused by the lying fossil industry. It’s a wakeup call for, We the People, to come together and to fight this abomination. 

We were lucky to catch up with director Katie Camosy, on the eve of the Grand Premiere of her film, which caused lots of emotions when it was shown, and with the gracious presence of legendary Jane Fonda, in person.

Q: So, tell me how this came together and what was the inspiration and the motivation to put this film together?

Katie: It’s really a documentary about living in the shadow of the oil and gas industry. We are down in Texas and Louisiana, along the U.S golf coast. In this film we will meet Shrimpers, Ranchers, former oil workers and all these people who are impacted by this industry. Their health, their livelihood, their jobs are at risk. And now everyone is fighting back.

Q: Why did you choose to make this movie and what was your motivation?

Katie: I have been working with Greenpeace for about ten years and filming stories about people that are living near the oil and gas industry. The built up in Texas and inn Louisiana is totally out of control. We have plastic refineries, gas terminals and a massive number of drillings. I was very moved by the stories of people living there. I wanted to bring that experience to other people. I was making a lot of short social medias videos. But I thought I couldn’t quite attack the story the ways it deserved and so we went about making this feature film.  We got Jane Fonda involved, and I can’t wait to see what people are thinking about our movie. 

Q: What are your hopes with this film? What type of impact can it create?

Katie: I hope that when people see this film that they will feel some righteous anger! You hear all of these stories in our movie and it’s hard not to feel anger and injustice. I hope that feeling make people want to  act!  There are things you can do. Go to our website www.GaslitDoc.com and you can see all the people who are in the film. And you can support them if you want. It’s also about realizing the type of our air and water is all over our country, sadly. 

Q: What was your biggest challenge to put together and make this film?

Katie: Probably how to go from 500 hours of footage to 1h50min of film! Everyone has a story and each of these stories could have their own film. My goal was to pull back and show why this is happening.  It was like a puzzle.  Each person tells their piece of this story. And what’s great is that we have people from all over the political spectrum.  This way I hope people, from every side, can find people they can relate to. 

Q: Being at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, what does it mean? Any expectations?

Katie: It’s a dream come true to be here!  Not only it is a phenomenal film festival but it’s also a place that   has his history of oil and gas incidents. It couldn’t more sense but to   be here.  We are so thrilled to Premiere our film in Santa Barbara.

Q: What comes next for this film?

Katie:  Well, we are looking at film festivals in Europe and we are looking for U.S Distribution. We really hope more and more people relate to this film and the people feature in it. That’s the goal and we hope our movie get some impactful effect.