Her quest resulted in the article “The Sperm Kings Have a Problem: Too Much Demand,” and working with Bowles on the article led him to realize there might also be a documentary in this fast-growing movement.
A lack of inventory and the high cost of traditional sperm banks had spawned network of Facebook groups that enable prospective mothers to solicit donations from men eager to help them. “I started seeing all these people — women and men advertising themselves, and I started sensing that behind each post there was a story,” he says about the New York Times-produced documentary.
Some are doing it for sexual reasons, whether it involves brief “N.I.” Natural insemination, or sex, as the first scene in the docu shows, or through artificial insemination. Some become attached to the idea that they’re helping women, similar to giving blood, while others like the idea they’re fathering dozens or hundreds of children around the world.
He asked himself, “What are these tender and uneasy moments that I’m seeing online? How do they translate into real life, and how can I be there to capture that?”
The film centers on three donors and several prospective moms who agreed to let Oppenheim follow them with his camera.
Nagel, a teacher who travels the world in effort to meet up with the children he has biologically fathered and remain some small part of their lives, despite his mother’s discomfort with the idea.
Stefan, divorced man who is looking to form deeper friendship with his recipients, such as Rachel, a young woman grappling with cystic fibrosis.
Tyree who loves helping people but whose own partner is struggling to conceive.
The intimate scenes of their lives include children coming to understand what it means to have a donor who drops in every so often, tense donation sessions in suburban motels and witnessing the crushing disappointment of women who aren’t able to conceive.
Sometimes, Oppenheim shad to stop shooting when things got too personal: “There were situations that aren’t in the film out of respect to the participants that were a little too painful, too vulnerable.”
But what is driving the men?
“They’re looking for something maybe bigger than themselves. They’re looking to cement sense of legacy, of purpose. A lot of the people in the film are are at different crossroads in their lives, questioning how they got to where they are and why are their lives not what they thought it would be. That kind of existential question is the thing that animates each scene.”
Some of the “sperm kings” are getting some type of erotic satisfaction. “I don’t think it’s purely sexual, but there are parts of it that are.”
As with other kinds of families, there can be legal issues with these informal donations that are less tightly controlled than conventional sperm banks.
“There’s no signing contracts or exchanging documents,” Oppenheim explains. If a recipient is no longer able to a child care, in some states the custody would revert to the father.
Nagel has fathered at least 138 children, but the film doesn’t deal with the moral or genetic ramifications, though Nagel’s elderly mother loudly declares her opposition to the idea.
“As a filmmaker is I really try to not express any sense of judgment. I love spending time with him, and I relate to him in a number of ways,” says Oppenheim.
“A lot of people will have a a strong reaction to his life choices,” Oppenheim acknowledges of Nagel, “but the thing that is fascinating about him is that I do think his heart is in the right place, even if his head is is in a different place.”
“I’m interested in these sort of unorthodox settings,” he says. “Whether that’s like Florida with The Villages, like the dream of retirement, or in sperm world that’s the pursuit of family. Then ‘Ren Faire,’ it’s a different question, but it’s really about power and proximity to power and finding that the kind of things that underpin the fantasy, the feelings of inadequacy or loneliness.”
