In 2013, Brittney Griner was selected as the first overall pick in the WNBA draft. In February 2022, the three-time Olympic gold medalist was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after Russian customs officials alleged they found cannabis oil vape cartridges in her luggage. The media frenzy surrounding her harrowing experience in a Russian penal colony and eventual release as part of a prisoner swap was fueled by speculation and attempts to leverage her narrative to advance political agendas.

Alex Stapleton’s documentary, The Brittney Griner Story, gives the floor to Griner and an inner circle of friends and family to tell her journey, her fight for freedom and her work to help other wrongfully detained Americans.

On September 25, after the Eastern Region Special Projects Committee Documentary Series screening in New York, Stapleton discussed the making of the film during a Q&A moderated by DGA National Vice President Laura Belsey (The Hunting Party).

During the conversation, Stapleton shared her current philosophy on trying to balance the political components of the movie.

“This question of being objective in journalism is interesting, especially right now. I think that the job of the film was to be a humanist first, and so we tried to create a film in a new realm right now where it’s not about trying to represent all sides. It’s like what sides are about saving lives at a basic fucking level of this country and what we demand out of the government that we pay taxes to versus, ‘how do I be fair?’”

Stapleton’s other directorial credits include the Emmy and 2025 DGA Documentary Series/News Award-nominated Sean Combs: The Reckoning, the feature length documentary, Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, the television documentaries Raising an Olympian and Shut Up & Dribble; and episodes of the series The Playbook and Artbound.

Stapleton has been a DGA member since 2013 and serves as an alternate on the DGA National Board, as a Co-Chair of the DGA Documentary Committee and is a member of the DGA Special Projects Committee and co-chairs the Committee’s Global Cinema Series subcommittee.