The veteran journalist had invited the camera into that most intimate of settings for his film Jon Snow<\/a>: A Last Big Story, a documentary that charted the devastating impact that Alzheimer\u2019s is having on his brain<\/a>. But he\u2019s still got a nose for a story. While making the film, Snow stumbled on a scoop: the cover-up of a mining disaster that was destroying land and water in Zambia. Suddenly, the film became something else. It was not only a study of a man coping with a cruel condition, but a report on a scandal that made headlines around the world. <\/p>\n Director Laura Warner reflects on making a documentary that was sad, surprising, and beautiful, and reflected the complex journey Snow is now on.<\/p>\n What it was like to film the doctor\u2019s surgery scene<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really difficult to film. It didn\u2019t just land in our laps \u2013 it took literally months and months of conversations and negotiations with Jon, his wife Precious, and Jon\u2019s doctors to arrange that scene. It was a genuine doctor\u2019s appointment and Jon has them every six to 12 months. A lot can happen between the appointments so it is really exposing. Precious said, \u2018OK, if I allow you to film it, then only you can be in the room and only you and the editor can look at the material. I\u2019ll allow you to choose what will go into the film, and everything else will then be deleted and will never be seen again by anybody.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very raw. All you see in the film is two or three minutes\u2019 worth of material. But actually it was an hour-long appointment where you really understand the carnage that this disease can wreak on an individual, on their spouse, and on a person\u2019s way of life and their future hopes and dreams.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was genuinely really upsetting, because by that point we\u2019d been filming with Jon for a really long time and I knew and loved Jon and Precious a lot, and the realities of the disease are just really harsh. It was probably one of the hardest things I\u2019ve ever filmed.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were a lot of other points during the filmmaking where I had to put the camera down and I thought, as a human being rather than a filmmaker: no, now\u2019s the time to look after Jon. Now\u2019s not the time to be filming.\u201d<\/p>\n The doctors were on board straight away<\/p>\n \u201cThey understand the benefits of people opening up, because Alzheimer\u2019s is really stigmatising, so people just feel that they want to hide their relatives and hide their loved ones, and they don\u2019t want to expose them, because they feel that it\u2019s embarrassing in some way. But one of the most important things that we all wanted to achieve with this documentary was to say, \u2018You can come out, don\u2019t feel stigmatised, don\u2019t feel embarrassed,\u2019 and to also to teach people who don\u2019t have a relative with Alzheimer\u2019s how to talk to people with the condition.\u201d<\/p>\n The moving reaction to the documentary<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t think any of us expected it to have such an impact, but everybody has been reaching out to all of us and talking about their family members and the experiences they\u2019ve had. They\u2019ve talked about how they\u2019re going to try and come out a little bit more into society and not be so embarrassed. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have a really long impact campaign that we\u2019re working on with the Alzheimer\u2019s Society, and we hope that the film won\u2019t just instigate more work in terms of scientific developments, but it will actually help people come out from behind closed doors, because I think the stigma just kills you, you know? It really stops people with Alzheimer\u2019s from interacting with society, and that really exacerbates the disease, and it does not help carers because they\u2019re stuck behind closed doors just dealing with this, feeling like they\u2019re alone.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people who really care about Jon, for all the right reasons, were worried that the film would detract from Jon\u2019s legacy as a war correspondent, a newscaster and a beloved national treasure. So I\u2019m really pleased that actually, now, people have said that this is a really great secondary legacy to have. He has helped a lot of people understand that you should not feel stigmatised for having Alzheimer\u2019s. Don\u2019t hide. Come out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":705064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-705063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/705064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Jon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Jon-Snow-copy.jpg.jpg\")
Jon Snow in \u2018A Last Big Story\u2019 (Channel 4)<\/p>\n