The Island President, Jon Shenk’s doc about Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed’s work advocating climate change legislation, has won the Documentary Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The doc is a spirited, pictorially dazzling story of the charismatic Nasheed’s charmingly quixotic attempt to use the fate of his island nation — ground zero when it comes to impending destruction by rising tides — to alert the world about the dangers of our carbon-producing modern lifestyles.

One of the most interesting parts of the doc is Shenk’s behind-the-scenes look at Nasheed in his cabinet meetings and conferences. I interviewed Shenk and Nasheed at the festival, and in this short excerpt, I asked the two to discuss their relationship as independent filmmaker and presidential subject.