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The director of the documentary short 'Edith+Eddie' tells how one picture led to an Oscar nomination

When Laura Checkoway caught a bus down to Virginia from New York City to check out the story of Edith Hill and Eddie Harrison, whose picture was being circulated online as "America's oldest interracial couple," she had no idea it would lead her on the road to her first Oscar nomination.
 A friend had texted Checkoway, a journalist-turned-filmmaker, a picture of the couple who married in 2014 at ages 96 and 95.

"I just kept looking into the picture and looking into their eyes and thinking what it would be like to fall in love at that time in their lives," she told ABC News.  A couple days later, Checkoway was on a bus to meet them. She thought she might film them for one weekend of dancing.

"It started as a look at love," she said. "I thought it would be a sweet, tender short portrait, and right away I realized that there was more to the story and that they were fighting to stay together. Little did we know how dramatically things would unfold."

Checkoway ended up shooting enough for a feature but in the edit realized she had a more compelling story as a 29-minute film. The result is the Oscar-nominated documentary "Edith+Eddie," a poignant look at elder abuse.

Source :- abcnews

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