What do John and Haley Mills, John and Angelica Huston, Francis and Sofia Coppola and Jon Voight and Angelina Jolie have in common?  Well, if you’re one of those (okay, one of us) Oscar obsessives, you recognized quite quickly that those names represent the short list of father/daughter Oscar winning combos.

This year, there might be a new addition.

Vanessa Roth has been immersed in the film industry for much of her life.  Her father is Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump”), and Vanessa has been behind the camera for over a decade as it is.  Her nomination this year for the documentary short “Freeheld” is her first brush with major film awards success after a long line of socially conscious filmmaking.

“My grandparents were very socially active and political, and I guess because of my dad, I always thought I would be a writer or be telling stories,” Vanessa said.  “The thing to me is that I feel like I can do better social work by making films and have a bigger impact on people and on systems.”

Indeed, Ms. Roth began both undergraduate and graduate study with the intention of building a sociological knowledge base that she would implement in her work as a filmmaker.  She holds a masters degree in social work and said she is typically interested in issues with children in her filmmaking.

“I was always drawn to news about kids and kids not having a real voice in their lives and being disempowered,” she said.

“Freeheld,” then, is a slight departure for Vanessa, and she said it was never anyone’s intention to do an issue film in any case.  But the doc centers on a topical issue to say the least: life assets being left in the hands of homosexual partners.  Filmmaker Cynthia Wade was the film’s director, and in the life of Lieutenant Laurel Hester, she found a microcosm for an issue of personal passion.

“She saw an article right when these things were happening, when they were going to freeholders to get their pension, and she was adamant that the story be told on the screen,” Vanessa said.

A New Jersey detective of over 20 years, Hester discovered in 2005 that she was dying of cancer.  Her final wish was to leave her pension benefits to her partner, Stacie, but the couple quickly found bureaucracy and, frankly, old-world mentality impeding those wishes.



Vanessa served as producer on the film.  She was just finishing up post-production on another project, “The Third Monday in October,” when Wade came to her with the idea to film the events as a documentary short.

Much like her father’s efforts in the world of fiction, Vanessa said she is interested in getting inside of people’s heads and finding out how they work, what their lives are like and how that informs their actions.

“With documentaries, you really get access to people’s lives more than you would in any other field,” she said.  “And the thing with documentaries that is interesting is that the writing comes in the editing.  The challenge is having this person’s life and figuring out how to make a story from that.”

Vanessa said she is quite comfortable in the non-fiction arena and doesn’t have a current interest in crossing over to join her father on the narrative side of things.

Speaking of Eric, I called him up to get his take on “Freeheld.”  He said he was very impressed with the film, having recently seen a completed version.  And those who know him would certainly concede his honesty about what he likes and doesn’t like to be a significant feature of his personality -- so compliments shouldn’t be considered handouts.

“I always thought she'd make a great journalist,” Eric said.  “I thought it was a very emotional piece.  And it’s  such a personal and intimate story, it’s hard not to feel something when you watch it.”

While Vanessa is experiencing her first brush with Oscar, Eric has become something of a seasoned pro where awards attention is concerned.  He captured his first Academy Award 14 years ago for “Forrest Gump” and has been in the rat race two other times, for “The Insider” in 1999 and “Munich” in 2005.  With “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” on the slate for 2008 and the Johnny Depp-produced “Shantaram” rejuvenated now that the writers strike has come to an end, he certainly shows no signs of slowing down.

That might be a daunting shadow to walk in, but Vanessa said she is lucky in that she has never felt like a seal of approval from her father was any sort of prerequisite.

“He’s always been really supportive of the work I do, but he wants it to be mine,” she said.  As for the Oscar frenzy, Eric has “just been telling me to enjoy it,” she said.

So far, Vanessa said she has had the most fun at the nominees’ luncheon, where she sat next to one of the producers of “Juno” and expressed some playful jealousy at the fact that Wade was seated next to actress Julie Christie.  Calling the experience “completely surreal,” Vanessa said the last two weeks have been “so much different than working on a documentary,” where she is more of a fly on the wall than a contender in the spotlight.

But she got a considerable kick out of the fashion extravaganza, offering this jaw dropping anecdote about her and her co-nominee hunting down threads for the show:

“Certain designers have been nice enough to loan us something.  But a friend of mine said she had a nice connection to a someone, and that designer’s response to her was that they already had an Academy Award nominee and that they didn’t consider documentary filmmaking to be ‘red carpet material!’”

OUCH.  Well, said designer might feel a bit silly if the world doesn’t get a chance to see his or her threads on display, should Vanessa join that shortlist of Oscar-winning fathers and daughters.  “Freeheld” has a great shot at the gold, but Vanessa said she is also very impressed with her fellow nominees.

“I think everything is really strong, and they’re so different from each other,” she said.  “The one thing they have in common is the length!”