Lifting the lid on ‘To Catch a Predator’: Director David Osit on his film ‘Predators’ • FRANCE 24

Now, we're going to move to my perspective guest. So, my guest on the program today is a three-time Emmy and Peabody award-winning documentary film director, editor, and composer. His latest project is the film Predators, and it premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It's now just out here in France as well on Paramount Plus. It's very hard-hitting film, a bit of a creepy film, um, to be honest, delving into the world of sexual predators and pedophilia. Before we talk to him, let's give you an idea and watch the trailer. >> Hi. >> Hey. >> You sound so sweet. Are you nervous about talking to me? >> Yeah. >> So, you know, we got to be like really careful about doing this. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. What are you thinking? What are you thinking? >> I'm thinking I wish I was there with you right now. >> Really? >> Yeah. >> My precious little princess. >> I like it when you call me that. >> I like calling you that. >> I thought about you all day. Did you finish painting your toenails? >> Yep. They're all nice and pink. I am a very lucky guy. >> You think so? >> Some people watching this may feel like you have something to answer for. What do you say to that? You're free to go. >> Creepy trailer. It's a pretty creepy uh film as well. Director David Ozit joining us now here on the program. Thanks very much for joining us. I mean, there's a lot more, isn't there, to the film than it just being about Peter Philly where it follows, doesn't it? Very successful at the time NBC television uh segment in the US which was called To Catch a Predator. >> Yes, that's right. It was a a segment on datine NBC in the US in the 2000s that would help set up hidden cameras in a sting house where men who were having online chats uh of a sexual nature with decoys who were who were pretending to be underage minors would then show up to the house and they'd meet the decoys. Um and then they'd meet a journalist named Chris Hansen uh who's the man you see interviewed at the end of that trailer. He'd then interview the men and tell them they were being filmed on national television, then tell them they were free to go, and at that point they'd be arrested by law enforcement. Uh, and this happened only about 20 episodes worth, but it became a national sensation in the United States and even in other countries. People had never seen anything like this before. >> I was going to say something I've never heard of and I I must admit I was quite shocked researching this that such a program could even exist. I mean, it's quite a a horrific premise, isn't it? It's a it's a bit of a hor horrific premise. I think you could argue that people got away with it 20 years ago because it was the beginning of the internet being a place that we were all on and fluent in, but it was before social media. So, a lot of parents um still didn't understand necessarily the dangers of the internet um or what was out there or what was even on it or how people were communicating with each other. So, this program started as a public service announcement basically, but rapidly became something very unprecedented, almost some form of entertainment. And my argument is is that it kind of became the prototype of modern true crime TV. >> Yeah. I mean, a lot of ethical, a lot of legal concerns as well, presumably. >> Yes. I don't want to spoil too much for people who haven't seen it, but basically the the the premise being complex is that these men uh are all having online chats with people they believe are underage, which in and of itself is the crime. So, these men can all be basically arrested before they enter a house. What happens instead is they're entering a sting house. They're being filmed by hidden cameras. Their identity is being released to the world. They um are being interviewed by a man who they think is a family member. Uh they don't know that they're about to be arrested. Uh all this is for us at home. Basically, everything from them getting out of the car to being arrested is basically uh an extra form of entertainment, but with these questions being asked by a journalist. And the program itself came to an end uh with a bit of a scandal, a suicide in fact. >> Well, again, one of the one of the other complicated issues that came up in the production of the show is that one of the men who was caught was an assistant district attorney in uh a wealthy Dallas suburb. Uh the man uh never showed up to the house, but the uh production of the show figured, well, this would be a big story. Let's go get him. Um they went to his home. They brought SWAT teams. They brought uh the cameras and the man uh unfortunately committed suicide uh while seeing film crews outside of his home ready to film the worst day of his life. Uh and and the show uh came to an end about six or seven episodes after that. >> So tell us about the film then. I mean what was your aim in making the film? Well, I never wanted to really make a film about this show for the exact reason that you were saying earlier. It's a bit of a creepy uh thing to think about. But what happened was I discovered the raw footage from the show, some of it. Um, which had been collected over the last 20 years by an online like fandom community basically who still watch the show. And I think it's also worth saying that there's in the present day a huge amount of amateur predator hunting communities who do this work all on their own and they post their videos on Tik Tok and YouTube, Instagram. Uh, so this is a very common thing these days, probably dwarfing the original show in its popularity, I would say. But to back up, I would watch this raw footage, and there's something very different about watching a 75minute clip of someone's life ending in slow motion. Even if you know they've done the worst thing, uh it is horrific to be a witness to that kind of sadness versus the show. It's hard to explain for someone who hasn't seen it, but and it's also hard to explain how popular it was in the United States 20 years ago. But the show is almost edited as a dark comedy. And when you watch these segments, they're kind of just to tell you what happened and then it's over. And I was thinking about the difference between these two. Why does one make me feel one thing and one make me feel nothing? And I figured that that might be something deeper about how we connect to true crime programming in the world, not just in the US, where it's kind of a way to almost make us feel more comfortable with the gross things in life to sit back and relax and watch it in our home. Uh, and I thought there was something to that that I wanted to explore. So that's really in essence what the film's about. It's not so much even just about this one TV program. It's about how does true crime make us feel. >> So did you have ethical concerns about making it yourself? I mean obviously there are a lot of positives but perhaps you know concerns about it at the same time. >> Absolutely. This is a film where I'm asking some people to recount some trauma, some things that they remembered about being involved with this show. I'm also spending time with predator hunting groups in this in this film and there are times when I'm filming and they're filming and and it's a very thin line of how ethical I might be versus how ethical they might be. And these are pretty open-ended questions that don't get asked a lot. Like I think a lot of documentary film making is basically just designed to say, "Well, here's a story and and and we're going to give you the story." But sometimes that requires a point of view and sometimes that point of view requires some difficult choices to get there and I think that that's pretty common. U but I think that's also representative of where modern media and journalism is at this point in time and the reason a lot of people have lost trust in modern media is it feels as though it has to take a side on certain moral issues and I wanted the film to actually be about that too. So, so I tried. >> Just time to ask just time to ask you really quickly about your other films as well. I mean, how do you pick your films? Because your your last film followed a man um who was mayor of Ramla for two years. >> That's right. Yeah. I I picked my films based on questions that I don't know the answers to and I want to make a film about. With that film, it was how do you run a city when you don't have a country? With this film, it's what has reality television done to us? >> Good way to look at it. Well, there you go. That's the last film just starting to pop up as we finish. But thanks very much for being with us for the program today. David Ozit, the film called Then Predators.

The award-winning director of a new film that delves into the seedy world of sexual predators and paedophilia has spoken to FRANCE 24 about the ethics of making it. David Osit is a three-time Emmy and Peabody Award-winning documentary film director. His latest project is the film “Predators”, which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. The film lifts the lid on “To Catch a Predator”, an American television segment of 20 years ago that set traps for sexual predators. We spoke to him in Perspective.
#Predators #ToCatchaPredator #truecrime

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