The best documentary (short subject) Oscar category is highly competitive—this year, the five nominees were chosen from a field of 104 qualifying films. Malibu local David Ulich, the executive producer of “End Game,” one of the five nominated short documentaries, is extremely pleased to be on the list.
“It’s exciting,” he said in a phone interview. “If you had told me 10 years ago that I’d be in the film business, I wouldn’t have believed you.” If the film does win the Oscar, though, he said he was not the one who will be on stage; that would be the documentary’s two directors/producers, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman.
Indeed, Ulich is an unlikely movie maker. A partner at the mega-law firm Sheppard Mullin, he currently serves as team leader of the firm’s “Non-Profit Sector Team,” which has won “Non-Profit Sector Law Firm of the Year” in California. He works primarily with educational, public and religious charities and foundations and sometimes their corporate partners.
Back in 1996, Ulich also cofounded the nonprofit Foundation for Global Sports Development (GSD), which creates and supports programs promoting sportsmanship, education, fair play and ethics for children around the world. The group works closely with the International Olympic Committee.
In 2015, GSD created Sidewinder Films in order to reach a broader audience with films and documentaries about “the transformative power of sport.” This is how Ulich got into the documentary filmmaking business.
The group’s very first short documentary, “Munich ‘72 and Beyond,” chronicled the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics and won Best Documentary at the LA Shorts Fest.
“End Game,” the group’s third documentary short, premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2018 and became available on Netflix on May 4. Despite the title (which may bring sports to mind), the film is about the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco, which is changing the way medical professionals care for terminally ill patients.
“It’s not quite a sports theme, but was inspired by a colleague whose daughter is a doctor in palliative, end-of-life care that takes more of a holistic approach,” Ulich said. “She came to us with the idea.”
The film follows three stories of “visionary medical providers who practice on the cutting edge of life and death, helping to change the way we think about both,” as it’s described online. Most of the film is shot at a Buddhist-inspired end-of-life residence in a San Francisco Victorian home. Dr. B.J. Miller, a physician who lost three limbs in an accident when he was 19 and has worked with both UCSF and Zen Hospice, is a featured medical professional. It also follows a core group of committed caregivers of various professions dedicated to relieving suffering, and to changing the way patients and their families think about and make choices about how they live their lives near the end.
“End Game” is now being shown around the country to interested groups in hospitals and churches as an educational tool and point for discussion. “Our mission is education,” Ulich said. “And being able to use the film for educational purposes in schools, et cetera, was part of our Netflix deal.”
“End Game isn’t an easy watch, but it’s a film America needs,” one reviewer said.
Ulich is, in fact, already on to his next film and Sidewinder’s first feature length documentary. “At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal,” about the Larry Nassar sexual abuse case, will premiere on HBO on April 29.
