Screen 5th December

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Issue 1782 December 5, 2014

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“THE BEST FILM OF THE YEAR. ‘BOYHOOD’ ISN’T JUST A MASTERPIECE. IT’S A MIRACLE.” ANN HORNADAY

“★★★★★

‘BOYHOOD’ IS NOT JUST A GENUINE EPIC, NOT JUST BEAUTIFUL AND MOVING,

IT LOOKS LIKE A CLASSIC ALREADY.”

“★★★★★ A FILM THAT I LOVE MORE THAN I CAN SAY.

AND THERE IS HARDLY A BETTER, OR NOBLER THING A FILM CAN DO THAN INSPIRE LOVE.”

DAVID SEXTON

PETER BRADSHAW

Produced, Written and Directed by

Richard Linklater

For screening info, please visit

.com/awards

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“REMARKABLE” – THE NEW YORK TIMES

“SUNDANCE’S BUZZIEST AWARDS ENTRY SINCE ‘TOP OF THE LAKE’” – THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

“EXHILARATING DRAMA” – THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

“MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL IS

CAPTIVATING” – TIME

“A SPLENDID EXAMPLE OF THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF TV” – THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

THE HONORABLE WOMAN BEST MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION AND ALL ELIGIBLE CATEGORIES ©2014 SundanceTV LLC. All rights reserved.

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LEADER

The price of success

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t the Screen Film Summit on December 1, one hot debate was about how to drive support for British films at the UK box office. The box office is in an overall slump in 2014 (admissions are down more than 5% year on year) and marketshare for British films at home is only 8%.

One radical solution put forward recently by Lionsgate UK CEO Zygi Kamasa is to price cinema tickets according to a film’s budget level and origins.

“Why is Marvel’s Avengers, for example, the same price as a film such as What We Did On Our Holiday?” he asked. “A blockbuster can cost $250m and a UK independent film can cost $4m but it’s £10 or more to see both. I think we should see UK films priced at £4 and US films at £10.”

He added at the summit: “We need to have the debate and explore other opportunities. The market has changed dramatically and we must do something to bring consumers to the cinema.”

I admire Kamasa’s drive to get a discussion started, although I’m not sure ticket price is the answer.

As StudioCanal UK CEO Danny Perkins said about the pricing debate: “It’s all about films having to compete on the same level. I’m not sure someone would go to the cinema and choose to see a film because it was cheap.”

So it has to begin with great films.

And then the industry has to figure out a way to champion those great films in a more effective way. Perkins’ suggestions include “a VAT break on theatrical returns or something like [Creative Europe’s] Automatic [scheme], which supports distributors for supporting European arthouse films. That scheme creates a virtuous cycle of investment and return.”

Those are smart ideas, and I also think bigger P&A support might be more useful than shifting prices. That way, smaller films get a boost in terms of attention, and might reach audiences

without appearing to consumers that they are in a bargain bin.

The BFI Film Fund earmarks $6.3m (£4m) annually for specialised film P&A costs, working on foreign-language, documentary and more low-budget productions. The Distribution Fund is doing good work but more money would help.

Also, collapsing release windows on some smaller films will be essential to let consumers see films how they want, when they want and allow distributors to maximise their marketing spend.

BBC Films head Christine Langan pointed to the different ad budgets available to indies and studios as key to the challenge faced by UK films entering the market. “What we’re seeing is that there are almost two separate industries,” she said at the summit. “The diary going forward for the next couple of years is full of enormous Hollywood films, which are branded goods. There’s another industry that’s much more personal, which is about auteur voices and human stories. Digital distribution is only so helpful for those pieces because they don’t have the advertising [budgets] to get above the parapet. Audiences often don’t know they exist.”

The fact Vue CEO Tim Richards’ speech was 99% concerned with Hollywood films shows just how little that UK film marketshare is impacting exhibitors’ bottom lines. He said Vue’s audience surveys show that parking is the number one concern about a trip to the cinema. How uninspiring.

There are bright spots at the UK box office to champion this year — Paddington, Mr. Turner and The Inbetweeners 2 being just three. But there should have been even more — there are brilliant films such as Locke, Gone Too Far and ’71 that should have connected even more with audiences.

So even if Kamasa’s suggestion isn’t the perfect answer, at least he has started a vital s discussion. ■

Home run Unbroken tells an inspiring true story, and even though it dutifully chronicles Louis Zamperini’s many hardships, it didn’t pack an emotional punch for me. I cry at supermarket ads, so I was surprised this film left me cold. It’s thoroughly well-intentioned and skilfully directed by Angelina Jolie, but where is the heart?

The best takeaway from the film is an impressive lead performance from Jack O’Connell. This 24-year-old from Derby has had a great year with ’71 and Starred Up, and Unbroken shows him willing to undergo a physical transformation as well as an emotional one. He’s so gaunt in parts of the film that he’s almost unrecognisable. Jolie made an inspired decision to cast him.

December 5, 2014 Screen International 1

Contents

International correspondents Asia Liz Shackleton lizshackleton@gmail.com Australia Sandy George +61 2 9557 7425 sandy.george@me.com Balkan region Vladan Petkovic +381 64 1948 948 vladan.petkovic@gmail.com Brazil

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Elaine Guerini +55 11 97659915 elaineguerini@terra.com.br France Melanie Goodfellow +33 6 21 45 80 27 melanie.goodfellow@btinternet.com Germany Martin Blaney +49 30 318 063 91 screen.berlin@googlemail.com

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Greece Alexis Grivas +30 210 64 25 261 alexisgrivas@yahoo.com Israel Edna Fainaru +972 3 5286 591 dfainaru@netvision.net.il Korea/deputy Asia editor Jean Noh +82 10 4205 0318

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hjnoh2007@gmail.com Nordic territories Jorn Rossing Jensen +45 202 333 04 jornrossing@aol.com Scotland

December 5, 2014

Allan Hunter +44 (0) 7904 698 848

Feature focus

12 QUANTUM LEAP

24 Crack the code

Spain

04 Going to market

Eddie Redmayne on the emotional and physical challenges of playing Stephen Hawking

Juan Sarda +34 646 440 357

The UK film industry’s top experts debate the big issues at the Screen Film Summit, such as declining box-office admissions, new models of financing and supporting talent

The Imitation Game brings the story of a littleknown hero, who changed the course of the Second World War, to the big screen

allan@alhunter.myzen.co.uk

jsardafr@hotmail.com UK Geoffrey Macnab +44 (0) 20 7226 0516 geoffrey@macnab.demon.co.uk

Subscriptions Screen International subscriptions Department, 3 Queensbridge, The Lakes, Northampton NN4 7BF Tel +44 1604 828 706 E-mail help@subscribe.screendaily.com Screen International ISSN 0307 4617

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14 Back in Business Michael Keaton on why he’s not that similar to Birdman’s Riggan Thomson

28 Grim reality Nick Broomfield reveals why doc Tales Of The Grim Sleeper is the story of a neighbourhood

Awards special

16 Shot in the dark

06 night of the independents

Jake Gyllenhaal opens up about why it was important for him to get under the skin of Nightcrawler’s sociopathic anti-hero

30 A life in movies

18 Guided by the light

36 awards people

08 European champions

Timothy Spall on tackling the biggest role of his career in Mr. Turner and how he discovered the character

David Heyman opens up at the Paddington premiere; Eddie Redmayne hits big in Italy; and Paul Thomas Anderson chats Inherent Vice

The European Film Awards’ 2014 contenders show off a breadth of work

20 A family portrait

Regulars

This year’s Moët British Independent Film Awards will toast the best of 2014’s independently produced home-grown titles

09 Laugh track Comedies hit big for European films at the global box office in 2014

When Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette and Ellar Coltrane were cast in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, they soon realised each had the role of a lifetime

Documentarian Steve James talks about capturing the career and spirit of Roger Ebert

32 reviews A critical eye on the latest films including Black Sea, Unbroken and Exodus: Gods And Kings

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B E ST P IC T URE

BEST DIRECTOR James Marsh BEST ACTOR Eddie Redmayne • BEST ACTRESS Felicity Jones BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Anthony McCarten BASED ON THE BOOK “TRAVELLING TO INFINITY: MY LIFE WITH STEPHEN” BY JANE HAWKING

“ E D D I E R E D M A Y N E A N D F E L I C I T Y J O N E S R E A C H F O R T H E S TA R S I N

TWO OF THE YEAR’S

B E S T P E R F O R M A N C E S.

”

Peter Travers

B R I L L I A N T

“

L E A D P E R F O R M A N C E S F R O M B O T H E D D I E R E D M AY N E A N D F E L I C I T Y J O N E S .”

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“‘THE THEORY OF EVERY THING’ HAS EVERY THING YOU WANT FROM A GREAT FILM...

I N S P I R I N G !

”

Bill Zwecker / Chicago Sun-Times

“EDDIE REDMAYNE’S PERFORMANCE IS

R E M A R K A B L E.” Kenneth Turan / Los Angeles Times

“

★ ★ ★ ★.

“FELICITY JONES IS

I N C R E D I B L E.” Christopher Rosen / The Huffington Post

★ ★ ★ ★ ★.”

Mick LaSalle / San Francisco Chronicle

I N F I N I T E LY AW E S O M E ! ” New York Post

E IDED R I EE R EDD DEMDAMYANY EN E

ONE FF E ELLI ICCI ITTYY JJ O E SS

For more on this extraordinary film, go to www.FocusGuilds2014.com

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In focus screen film summit

Industry taps market value At the Screen Film Summit, the UK film industry’s top experts debated the big issues of the day, such as declining box-office admissions, new models of financing and supporting talent

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mproving the box-office performance of British films was one of the hot themes of the Screen Film Summit, which gathered UK industry experts at the BFI Southbank on December 1.

Amanda Nevill, CEO of the British Film Institute (BFI) — which partnered on the event — revealed an ambition to see the market share of British films in the UK double to 16%.

Opening the summit, Nevill said: “The share of UK films in our home theatrical market has been bumping along at around 8% for the past five years with the occasional spike when we have films such as The King’s Speech, The Woman In Black or The Inbetweeners. I don’t think 8% is good enough.

What would the world look like if that doubled? Just imagine the financial benefit it would bring to indigenous producers and the sector as a whole.

“It’s a complex algorithm that involves so many sectors — production, distribution, exhibition, education and audience development,” she added.

“We all know our current UK model will not sustain exactly as it is,” Nevill continued.

“Theatrical admissions are plateauing and the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association is working on this. Digital revenues are slow. We need to look at what we can do to speed up growth here.”

This year’s box-office woes — UK admissions are down 5.3% year on year — was a recurring topic across the day. “Audiences are more discerning and unforgiving than ever,” said Danny Perkins, CEO of StudioCanal UK, in his keynote.

“If what you’re doing isn’t first rate, you often can’t compete,” he told the 350-plus delegates. “There is so much competition for audience attention in this connected, digital world.”

While Perkins stated that he continued to support the full theatrical window to “protect the experience of people going to the cinema together”, he added that lower-budget features could benefit from more flexible terms.

“Rather than spending P&A money on releasing a film theatrically and then waiting four months before spending more money on DVD, being flexible on the windows is something that could ultimately benefit the film,” he explained.

Lionsgate UK CEO Zygi Kamasa reiterated his suggestion that lower ticket prices for British films could stimulate admissions.

“My objective is simple,” he said. “I want to

4 Screen International December 5, 2014

strong Hollywood blockbusters coming in the 2015 and 2016 pipeline.

Perkins does not back the idea of cheaper ticket prices for British films. “It might be better to look behind the scenes as to how we support these films because it is super tough for them, rather than having something up front and public-facing because I’m not sure long-term that’s the best message to give the consumer.”

That challenging climate for independents was also addressed by BBC Films head Christine Langan. “What we’re seeing is that there are almost two separate industries. The diary going forward for the next couple of years is full of enormous Hollywood films, which are branded goods. There’s another industry that is much more personal, which is about auteur voices and human stories. Digital distribution is only so helpful for those pieces because they don’t have the advertising [budgets] to get above the parapet.”

Amma Asante

Amanda Nevill

increase cinema admissions. Particularly for British movies. This idea may go nowhere.

But we need to have the debate and explore other opportunities.”

Vue CEO Tim Richards said ticket pricing is “absolutely not” the cause or answer to falling cinema admissions in the UK. “We are in an industry in which people will pay virtually anything to see a film they really want to see. If there is a film they do not want to see, they will not go even if it’s free,” he continued. “[The 2014 slump] is not a Netflix issue or an infrastructural issue. It’s a movie slate issue,” Richards said, pointing to some

‘We all know our current UK model will not sustain exactly as it is’ Amanda Nevill, BFI

Supporting talent Director Amma Asante spoke unequivocally in her keynote about the need to support film-makers beyond their debut feature. She said: “For a film-maker, the first movie is tough — but I would argue that the second movie is at least as tough, if not more difficult to get off the ground. Those difficulties appear to become compounded when the film-maker is female and/or of a minority.”

It took Asante more than nine years to follow her Bafta winning feature debut A Way Of Life with Belle. “It makes sense for all funding entities of our industry to play a part in this. The leap between the first and second movie is often laden with the ambitions of the film-maker who wants to make a bigger second movie than their publicly funded, low-budget debut, alongside fears from commercial entities.”

BFI Film Fund head Ben Roberts discussed the need for directors to better understand the potential markets for their films.

“You’ve got to present yourself as a financeable proposition,” he said. “Think about who and what you are as a director and what your market is… It’s important that film-makers aren’t film-makers alone, but that they are also part-businessman, part-marketeer, etc.”

Producer Dominic Buchanan touched on the importance of strong producer-director relationships, and said that he looked to the future with Lilting director Hong Khaou before they made their Sundance hit: “When we set out, I spoke to Hong about the impor-

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Theodore Wood

Danny Perkins

Elizabeth Karlsen and Neil Thompson

The Screen Film Summit, held at the BFI Southbank

tance of him and us making a plan and having a road-map post-Lilting.”

Producer Christopher Granier-Deferre of iFeatures recommended that all feature films could take on an associate producer to learn producing skills on the job.

Connecting globally The ‘international ambitions’ panel of experts spoke of the increasing importance of international sales companies in financing and packaging. Josh Varney, partner at management/agency/production company 42, said: “The most important people are the sales agencies.” And Blueprint Pictures’ Graham Broadbent added that “their numbers are essential” for planning the budget and shooting days.

Hammer Films CEO Simon Oakes warned: “The UK independent model is a semi-broken model. It’s not making the most money in its home market and you’re taking a smaller MG or P&A commitment just to make sure you get the film made.”

Fabien Westerhoff, head of sales at WestEnd Films, spoke of the different types of UK films that hit in different markets. There are films such as Belle that can hit adult audiences (or older ‘grey dollar’ audiences) in North America or Australia/New Zealand and other historical Commonwealth territories. Then there are auteur-driven films such as ’71 or The Selfish Giant that sell well to spe-

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Graham Broadbent (left) and Simon Oakes

‘The UK independent model is a semibroken model.

It’s not making the most money in its home market’ Simon Oakes, Hammer Films

cialty distributors in western Europe and North America, and then the more commercial genre fare that sells well to Southeast Asia and Latin America, he said.

Working with China is another beast altogether. “China is like this candy apple we would all like to bite into. Right now we can lick it but not bite it,” Westerhoff said.

Although Isabel Davis, head of international at the BFI, said of China, “It’s something we want to commit to for the long term.” She hopes the UK-China co-production agreement will be ratified soon. “It will open up Chinese appetite for more diverse content, but it’s definitely going to take time.”

Looking at the finance models for independent film, Elizabeth Karlsen spoke about how Number 9 Films had pieced together finance for Todd Haynes’ New York-set Carol to shoot in the US. “It’s a period, lesbian love story and that has a certain price tag in the marketplace — even though we eventually got an A-list cast of Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara on board — and that’s around $15m,” said Karlsen.

Although London-based sales company HanWay had achieved strong pre-sales on the title following its launch at Cannes in 2012 — to TF1 for France, StudioCanal for the UK and The Weinstein Company in the US — the film also needed to take advantage of Ohio’s 25%-35% rebate as well as a 30% rebate for doing post-production in New York with Goldcrest.

Neil Thompson of Formosa Films, which has regularly used the Enterprise Investment Scheme, said the company taps into highnet-worth individuals with a passion for UK film rather than expectations of making money on their investment.

“Our niche is people to whom we say, ‘You’re going to lose your money.’ Most of our investors invest with us because they’re fans of British films, know it’s hard to produce them and are in a position where they can help,” he said. “With the tax breaks, their exposure is pretty low and they’re willing to write it off. They know it’s like backing a horse and that nine times out of 10 you lose.”

Changing audiences Cinema across the globe needs to adapt to the digital age to remain “relevant” in the future, experts warned.

“The task for us is to make cinema relevant in a time when everything is changing. It’s important to embrace all the other ways people can see films,” said Clare Binns, director of programming and acquisitions at UK arthouse network Picturehouse Cinemas. Her company is very strong in alternative content and also experimenting with day-and-date releases like A Field In England.

“We just started something called ourscreen which allows people to book films of their choice into cinema slots. The most important thing is to make the cinemas somewhere you can see a film, where you can see alternative content [and] you can have something to eat,” Binns added.

Andy Whittaker, founding chairman of distributor Dogwoof, added: “For us it’s always a case of trying to understand the audience and working with people like YouTube, Netflix, Apple as well as the cinemas to find the coms bination that maximises revenue.” n Reporting by Melanie Goodfellow, Wendy Mitchell, Michael Rosser and Andreas Wiseman. The Screen Film Summit, in partnership with the BFI, was supported by Creative Skillset London, Molinare, Nyman Libson Paul and Rentrak.

December 5, 2014 Screen International 5

AWARDS SPECIAL BIFA

Night of the independents This year’s Moët British Independent Film Awards will toast the best of 2014’s independently produced home-grown titles. Ian Sandwell reports

‘‘

B

IFA recognition feels like validation of being part of sustaining an independent spirit and approach in the industry,” says Warp Films producer Robin Gutch of the annual Moët British Independent Film Awards (BIFAs), which will take place at Old Billingsgate in London on December 7.

“The awards are like a selective Grand National in which the outsider can sometimes win,” he says, perhaps referring to Metro Manila’s best film award last year. “It really does feel that the breadth as well as depth of the British industry is truly reflected.”

This year, Warp Films’ Northern Irelandset thriller ’71 leads the field with nine nominations. Co-produced by Crab Apple Films’ Angus Lamont, ’71 is the feature directorial debut of Yann Demange and stars Jack O’Connell.

It is followed by Matthew Warchus’s Pride with seven nominations, while Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner, Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank and Daniel Wolfe and Matthew Wolfe’s Catch Me Daddy each have five nominations.

Director Tom Hooper is

6 Screen International December 5, 2014

the chair of this year’s jury, which votes on the winners after the BIFA pre-selection committee chooses the nominations from a longlist. The jury also includes Filth director Jon S Baird, actor Stanley Tucci and former Screen Star of Tomorrow Zawe Ashton.

Many believe BIFA’s strength lies in its diversity. “The range of films that come under the BIFA umbrella is amazing,” says ’71 producer Lamont. “It makes it an even better feeling when the film you’ve been working on is nominated alongside the work of legends like Mike Leigh. You’re not really thinking about that when you’re out on location and into the fourth week of night shooting.”

A slew of BIFA nominations can also be a real stamp of approval for everyone involved in the film. “It is a very positive outcome for the financiers who took a big risk on the project and now have their decision vindicated,” says Lamont.

As well as giving a boost to UK films now in cinemas, such as Mr. Turner, the timing of the BIFAs can also be advantageous in terms of heaping further awards recognition onto films that have finished their theatrical run.

“You look at Brendan Gleeson in Calvary, which is a fantastic performance, but it’s in a film released in the spring,” says Alex Hamilton, managing director of eOne Films UK.

‘The awards are like a selective Grand National in which the outsider can sometimes win’ Robin Gutch, Warp Films

(Left) Frank

Calvary has four BIFA nominations in total, including best film, best director and best screenplay for John Michael McDonagh, and best actor for Gleeson.

This year’s awards ceremony will draw the curtain on Tessa Collinson and Johanna von Fischer’s nine years as BIFA’s co-directors.

“It’s the right time to move on. BIFA has grown up,” von Fischer explains of the decision they took in March and announced in September. Under their tenure, the BIFAs have developed into one of the most respected events on the UK film calendar.

Indicative of this, Collinson notes this year has been “the quietest year post-nominations for criticism and the noisiest for talking about what’s been nominated”.

Strength in numbers Von Fischer is proud of the number of films recognised by BIFA during their joint tenure.

“There is a rigour that’s put into our selection process, which our members take very seriously and commit to,” she explains. “It’s not just about the films that are nominated but all of the films that are submitted. It’s an area where new talent can be introduced to people they wouldn’t necessarily know.”

This year saw the pre-selection committee of more than 70 members view 250-plus films, a record for BIFA. A more visible change this year is a new host in the guise of The Inbetweeners actor Simon Bird, who will take the podium from

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‘There is a rigour that is put into our selection process, which our members take very seriously’ Johanna von Fischer, BIFA Catch Me Daddy

Mr. Turner

Pride

BIFA patron James Nesbitt. As BIFA’s reputation continues to grow, Collinson hopes Bird will attract an audience that “might not usually think about BIFA”.

“He brings in a younger audience, a diversity that’s really good for the awards,” she says of Bird.

Taking over from Collinson and von Fischer after this year’s ceremony are Amy Gustin, who has worked at Raindance Film Festival, and Deena Wallace, former head of film at Bafta. They are keen to establish a board to take the BIFAs forward, which will consist of the duo, Raindance and BIFA founder Elliot Grove and industry representatives.

Gustin says: “Deena and I will be doing the day-to-day work and a lot of decisions will be made at that level. But any real key decisions, for the sake of the industry, will go through the board to keep BIFA in a position where it’s wanted and needed within the industry.”

Having already worked with both of them, Grove believes he has the “dream team” to continue Collinson and von Fischer’s work.

“Tessa and Johanna developed the brand and the event beyond my wildest dreams. When I met with Deena and Amy, I realised my vision for the BIFAs way back in 1998, which hasn’t changed, and their ambition for the future was absolutely aligned.”

One of Grove’s aims is to make the appearance of the BIFA logo on a film’s poster something that “distinguishes those films and hopefully gets more British eyeballs to watch

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Calvary

those films. There’s a culture in Britain that a film isn’t really worthy unless the Americans like it, and that’s something we’ve tried to change with BIFA.” Gustin and Wallace are full of praise for the outgoing BIFA co-directors. “Establishing an awards ceremony isn’t easy and it now has this fantastic reputation,” says Wallace.

“We want to build on all of that hard work and it’s a lot easier to do because you’re talking to people who already know BIFA. It can now really help a film that otherwise wouldn’t get seen and, because of its position in the film’s lifecycle, it can do that earlier.”

Gustin agrees: “It’s a huge responsibility that we’re taking very seriously. We’re both excited by where we can take BIFA to make it even more relevant to the industry, expanding on it being the jewel in the crown for independent film and being as important to the film community as Bafta is.”

Collinson and von Fischer, who are keen to continue working together, are pleased to hand over such a successful proposition to the new team. “It’s in really good shape; it’s a really good feeling to be able to hand something over in that way,” says Collinson.

“What happens next is completely up to the new team,” von Fischer adds. “We’re saying we’re here if they want to ask us anything.”

But before they leave, Collinson and von Fischer have one final request for the industry: “We actually want to get to the afterparty this year. If you see us looking serious s and working, get us dancing.” ■

’71

December 5, 2014 Screen International 7

IN FOCUS EUROPE

European champions The European Film Awards’ 2014 contenders show off a breadth of work. Sarah Cooper reports

I

t is a mark of the diversity of European film-making that the nominees at the upcoming European Film Awards (EFAs) range from a Russian retelling of the Book of Job, to a chronicle of a woman’s sexual adventures, to a dark comedy set in a French ski resort.

“The breadth of movies produced every year across Europe is incredible in its scope and diversity, and the European Film Awards is the place where we come together to celebrate that diversity, but also the common cultural themes we Europeans have,” explains producer Mike Downey, deputy chairman of the Berlin-based European Film Academy, which produces the annual awards ceremony.

Every other year the EFAs travel from Berlin to a different European city, and the 27th edition will take place on December 13 in the Latvian capital of Riga, which also happens to be the 2014 European Capital of Culture.

The awards ceremony receives a financial boost of $1.2m (¤1m) from the host city, which will be Wroclaw, Poland in 2016.

Runners and riders Leading the pack with five nominations is Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida, which won the Fipresci special presentations prize at Toronto earlier this year. The 1960s-set Polish drama about a young nun will compete for European film of the year alongside Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Palme d’Or winner Winter Sleep set in the Anatolian mountains; Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev’s much lauded Leviathan, which won the best screenplay award at Cannes; Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s Un Certain Regard jury award winner Force Majeure and Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac Director’s Cut. One noticeable omission from the list is the Dardenne brothers’ Two Days, One Night, although Marion Cotillard has been nominated in the European actress category.

For the last two years the winner of EFA’s top prize — Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty in 2013 and Michael Haneke’s Amour in 2012 — has gone on to win the foreign-language Oscar.

According to The Great Beauty’s producer, Nicola Giuliano, the film’s success at the EFAs — it also won the European director, actress and editor awards — was a crucial factor in helping to secure further

8 Screen International December 5, 2014

Winners and presenters at the European Film Awards 2013

prizes. “The accolades we received at the EFAs marked the first step toward international recognition of Paolo Sorrentino’s film, and the most prestigious acknowledgement of the film’s chances abroad,” says Giuliano, adding that the EFAs help to “restore the identity of European cinema”.

Downey adds: “American distributors consistently tell me that not only does the mark of approval matter on the poster, but as a market for other awards around the world.

And if you look at this year’s line up, it is clear there will be significant crossover.”

Roger Michell’s Le Week-end is up for the European comedy award, alongside Paco Leon’s Carmina & Amen and Pierfrancesco Diliberto’s The Mafia Only Kills In The Summer. “ We still believe European cinema needs a bit more humour and we had a lot of good feedback from the industry, so it’s something we will absolutely continue,” says Marion Döring, European Film Academy director and producer of the EFAs, of the comedy award that was introduced last year.

This year’s shortlist boasts

‘Very often you discover that a director has gone on to make a film with an actor or DoP that they discovered at our ceremony’ Marion Döring, European Film Academy

(Left) Ida

50 films from 31 countries, with the winners being voted by the academy’s 3,000-plus members. However, the recipients of the craft awards have already been selected by a special seven-member jury. The lifetime achievement award recipients will be 12 Years A Slave director Steve McQueen and veteran film-maker Agnes Varda.

With more than 1,000 guests expected to attend the ceremony, the EFAs also provides the European film industry with one of the calendar’s best networking opportunities.

“When film-makers are at film festivals they are so busy, but when they come to us, they have a whole 48 hours to spend together.

Very often you discover that a director has gone on to make a film with an actor or DoP that they discovered at our ceremony,” Döring says.

The EFAs could be on the verge of entering a new era with the arrival of presenter Thomas Hermanns — the German comedian takes over from Anke Engelke — and a new chair in the form of Polish director Agnieszka Holland.

Says Döring: “It’s a big challenge to produce the awards, with so many different cultures and audiences, but we think it’s very important to continue, because films can help people to understand other cultures and we want them to have as big an audis ence as possible.” ■

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I

t has been the year of the local comedy.

In every major European territory in 2014 a home-grown crowdpleaser — sometimes two or three — has emerged to tickle audiences. Many are breaking records.

In Sweden, the adaptation of Jonas Jonasson’s bestselling novel The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared, directed by popular actor-director Felix Herngren, has grossed $23m since opening on Christmas Day 2013. That makes it the most successful film of any nationality of all time in Sweden.

The film follows the misadventures of the sprightly Allan Karlsson, played by popular comedian Robert Gustafsson, when he is forced to move to a retirement home.

Unlike many local comedies that struggle to raise more than a half-hearted smile outside their own borders — with producers preferring to buy the concept and remake it in tune with their national sensibilities and local comic foibles — Jonasson’s novel has been published in more than 35 countries, selling more than 5 million copies around the world.

By mid-November the film had done particularly well in Germany, grossing $11.5m, with further rollouts to date spanning Spain ($1.7m), South Korea ($1.7m), France ($900,000) and Italy ($323,000). The film has been sold extensively around the world, including to StudioCanal for the UK and Australia, Mongrel Media in Canada, and Longride in Japan.

Travelling tales German audiences have warmed to another humorous import, French comedy Serial (Bad) Weddings, already a smash hit at home. Directed by Philippe de Chauveron, the film stars Christian Clavier and Chantal Lauby as the parents of four daughters who all marry men from different cultures and religions. It is the second-most popular film of the year in Germany ($33.3m), outperforming Matthias Schweighöfer and Torsten Künstler’s locally produced romantic comedy Vaterfreuden ($24m), which is Germany’s top-grossing homegrown film to date.

Schweighöfer also stars in Vaterfreuden,

Laugh track Comedies hit big for European films at the global box office in 2014. By Louise Tutt

Serial (Bad) Wedding

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared

about a man rendered infertile following a ferret bite, who goes in search of the mother of his unborn child.

In France, Serial (Bad) Weddings is the biggest film of the year at $105m. The second is another local comedy, Supercondriaque ($45m), written, directed and

The Inbetweeners 2

starring Dany Boon as an anxiety-ridden medical photographer.

Two Spanish titles are driving the market share of local films in Spain to a record 23.6% this year. Emilio MartinezLazaro’s fish-out-of-water comedy Spanish Affair has taken $77.5m to become

the biggest local film of all time. It is the story of an Andalusian man who moves to the Basque region to be with his girlfriend.

Audiences have also warmed to Daniel Monzon’s Gibraltar-set thriller El Nino ($20.8m), starring Sergi Lopez, Luis Tosar and Ian McShane.

Local flavour Russia’s big local hit of 2014 is Viy ($34m) by Oleg Stepchenko, an adventure fantasy about 18th-century European cartographers, starring Jason Flemyng and Andrey Smolyakov.

In Italy, the standout local title is Luca Miniero’s Un Boss In Salotto ($17m).

Paola Cortellesi and Rocco Papaleo star in a comedy about a mafia boss being placed under house arrest in the home of his law-abiding sister and her family.

The Inbetweeners 2 ($56m), a bawdy sequel about the exploits of four teenage boys, and Mrs Brown’s Boys D’Movie ($28.8m), a slapstick caper about an Irish matriarch, played by the (male) Irish comedian Brendan O’Carroll, both based on hit TV shows, are the two big local stories for the UK and Ireland box office. The Inbetweeners 2 opening weekend of $4.5m was the biggest ever for a comedy in the UK, breaking the records set by the first Inbetweeners film in 2011.

Several European-produced titles have found big audiences beyond Europe this year. The three most successful European films in the US this year are four English-language titles: Luc Besson’s sci-fi action film Lucy ($127m), starring Scarlett Johansson; Jaume Collet-Serra’s airplane thriller Non-Stop ($92m); Anton Corbijn’s spy drama A Most Wanted Man ($17m); and UK period drama Belle ($11m), directed

by Amma Asante.

Lucy and Non-Stop, both majorityFrench productions, have performed well throughout the world, particularly in Asia where Lucy was partly shot. It grossed $44m in China to make the territory the second-biggest market for the title after the US. Olivier Dahan’s Cannes opening film Grace Of Monaco, starring Nicole Kidman, also hit big in Asia; its two biggest territories to date being Japan ($5m) and s China ($4m). ■

$23m $33m $34m $127m Swedish box office for The 100Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared, since opening in December 2013

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French hit comedy Serial (Bad) Wedding’s box office in Germany

Box office for Russia’s big hit of 2014, Oleg Stepchenko’s Viy

US box office for Luc Besson’s majority-French production Lucy

Source: Box Office Mojo. All figures correct as of November 15, 2014

December 5, 2014 Screen International 9

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AWARDS SPECIAL ■ EDDIE REDMAYNE ■ MICHAEL KEATON ■ JAKE GYLLENHAAL ■ TIMOTHY SPALL ■ BOYHOOD ■ THE IMITATION GAME ■ NICK BROOMFIELD ■ STEVE JAMES

Prizefighters

I

t’s a man’s world this year at the Oscars. The best actor race is hotting up to be even more competitive than best actress.

The contender to beat, in my mind, is Eddie Redmayne for The Theory Of Everything — you forget you’re even watching an actor by the end of the film. It’s not just a physical performance as there is so much emotional connection on-screen between Redmayne and Felicity Jones.

And, as we all know, personality counts in these things and Redmayne has a reputation

for being a hard working, humble actor who has quietly undertaken eye-catching roles (Les Misérables and my personal favourites Birdsong and Savage Grace) before transforming himself into Stephen Hawking.

The other charming Brit in the race is Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game. It’s a brilliant performance but a bit colder (as it should be; Alan Turing wasn’t a warm guy), so that’s something voters will have to reconcile.

Cumberbatch has been making near-perfect career choices and he has the might of Harvey Weinstein behind him.

Michael Keaton is another front runner as Birdman is Keaton’s best-ever work and a hell of a comeback role.

I think those three are the top picks, but it’s a strong crop battling for the other nominations: David Oyelowo in Selma, Steve Carell in Foxcatcher, Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler and Bradley Cooper in American Sniper.

Timothy Spall is also in the running for Mr. Turner and the New York Film Critics Circle win has definitely boosted his chances this week.

Wendy Mitchell, editor

Steve Carell in Foxcatcher

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» December 5, 2014 Screen International 11

AWARDS SPECIAL THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING

Quantum leap Eddie Redmayne tells Wendy Mitchell about the emotional and physical challenges of playing theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking

E

ddie Redmayne recently spent a lot of time looking in the mirror. No, it’s not a vanity problem — it was preparation for a particularly un-vain role, playing Stephen Hawking in The Theory Of Everything.

Redmayne did a wealth of research and preparation to play Hawking, and he reveals there are no shortcuts or simple tricks for identifying those few facial muscles — especially around the eyebrows and lips — that Hawking is able to use at the later stages of his motor neurone disease.

That is where the mirror came in. “It was a lot of sitting in front of a mirror in my apartment with an iPad full of videos of Stephen. It was just learning to do it by trial and error; all of those energies we usually use are channelled into those isolated muscles. And shooting on film, a camera sees that minutiae.”

Modestly, Redmayne admits he had his doubts about whether he could rise to the challenge of playing a living genius.

“When you’re in that process of trying to persuade people that you can do something, you do it with a blind confidence to make them believe in you,” he says with a small laugh. “Then you get the job and you have no idea how to go about it.”

His preparation was multi-layered. It started by discussing, with director James Marsh, what they wanted to achieve with the film and the character. One thing the actor and the director had in common was that they were both “gently intimidated” in telling the story of Jane and Stephen Hawking.

Both men were drawn to the script, by Anthony McCarten, because it was not a straightforward biopic of the brilliant scientist struggling with his disease. “What I read was a complicated and passionate love story about two extraordinary human beings. It was unlike anything I’d read before,” Redmayne says.

During his four-month preparation, the actor read Hawking’s works and frequently went to an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) clinic in London to meet patients. Also, he and co-star Felicity Jones, who plays Hawking’s first wife Jane, would also visit ALS patients to see the reality of how families coped with the disease.

“It was not just educating myself on the physical side of the disease but also the emotional impact on families,” Redmayne notes.

Dancer Alex Reynolds helped Redmayne to train his body for some of the awkward positions he held for extended takes. To add

12 Screen International December 5, 2014

‘It was not just educating myself on the physical side of the disease but also the emotional impact on families’ Eddie Redmayne

to the challenge, the film was not able to shoot in sequence, so Redmayne might be shooting a scene with crutches in the morning and then a wheelchair-bound scene in the afternoon. “It was learning to jump between those physicalities to access them quite swiftly. In a way I tried to learn them like a dancer at specific stages.”

Seal of approval Redmayne also knew the role had to have an emotional core at all stages, not just mimicry of a disability. “The disease was secondary to Stephen, and also this script wasn’t about his disease,” he says proudly.

He and Jones had never worked together before but they were friends who had trained separately at Donmar Warehouse theatre in London. They had each conducted their own research and brought that to the table for two weeks of official rehearsals.

The young actors found a comfort working with each other so that they could improvise together on set — Marsh liked to spend a few minutes most days shooting ‘home footage’ style unscripted moments.

Redmayne met Hawking about five days before the shoot began, and Redmayne confesses to “fear that I’d done months of preparation, and what if I’d got it all wrong?”

When they met, the actor recalls, “It was that force of personality that came through.

His humour and wit and mischief… And that was wonderful; that was the last component to take into the shooting.”

The shoot, understandably, was “an intense experience”.

“We were rigorously protective of these characters. It’s a term thrown around a lot but it really was a ‘passion project’. Jane and Stephen let us into their lives.”

The shoot was especially rewarding thanks to Marsh’s collaborative nature.

Redmayne says: “I’ve never worked with someone who is so emboldening; he believes in collaboration in the truest sense of the word… He encourages every department to get involved.”

In addition to being the one to beat for this year’s best actor Oscar, Redmayne has also picked up some impressive scientific knowledge along the way. He says he now “sort of ” understands black holes. “Get me into worm holes and string theory and I start struggling,” he adds with a laugh.

Thankfully, his next job is not in physics but another film with Working Title: Tom Hoops er’s The Danish Girl, shooting in January. ■

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December 5, 2014 Screen International 13

AWARDS SPECIAL BIRDMAN

Birdman

14 Screen International December 5, 2014

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Back in business

Michael Keaton tells Jeremy Kay he’s not that similar to Birdman’s washed-up Riggan Thomson

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reshly minted Gotham Award best actor and Spirit Award nominee Michael Keaton does not subscribe to the media narrative that suggests Birdman mirrors his own recent life and career.

His on-screen persona Riggan Thomson brawls, frets, twitches and sweats his way through Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s trenchant character study about an angstridden former star — but that, Keaton maintains, is not really him.

Ever since Keaton broke out in Ron Howard’s Night Shift more than three decades ago and earned worldwide renown with Beetlejuice and two Batman films, his inimitable brand of hyperactivity has marked him out as a rare talent.

Yet the physical foibles and spaghetti junction of facial tics and grimaces do not translate into what one might expect.

In person Keaton is easy to talk to, secure in his path and generous with his time, even during a break from post on Thomas McCarthy’s Catholic Church sex abuse drama, Spotlight.

He dismisses the notion his life bears clear similarities with that of Riggan — Birdman’s erstwhile super-hero actor on a desperate quest for respect — unwavering in his belief that his partial withdrawal from the limelight was a product of wanting to spend more time with his family.

Keaton readily admits this led to several lacklustre roles. “Mostly I would take a role to keep my stay in the gym, as I like to say.

They were very low-key things. Most of it wasn’t interesting. I had the most fun directing [The Merry Gentleman], when there’s no time for boredom.”

Taking flight Now, Keaton says he loves acting as much as ever. At the same time he holds his past in healthy regard, citing the Batman role as a “ground-breaking” source of pride that gained him wider international exposure.

He loved working with Tim Burton — adding that he would do a Beetlejuice sequel if his old collaborator was involved — and seeks out directors with distinctive voices.

“You want to work with talented people and talented directors,” says Keaton. “I had seen [Inarritu’s] films. He’s one of the

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handful of guys that if you get the opportunity to work with, you really want to be in business with.”

He adds: “This is as much about him as it is about anyone,” on the topic of Inarritu’s work on Birdman, yet the actor still had to find a way to get inside Riggan.

“The truth is you always just tell the truth in the scene. Since it was raw, human emotion it wasn’t all that complicated, frankly.

“You had to be off-script very early on and word perfect. We rehearsed for four or five weeks and the process was intense, and not only for the actors but for the camera operators and crew and everybody. It was a tremendous disciplinary exercise.”

The film’s magic realism appealed from the start. “I was excited by it. The whole idea of him levitating at the beginning — there might have been a little bit of me wondering if it was being too cute and wanting to do things just for fun, but it became clear that wasn’t it at all.”

Keaton’s ability to find the right shade of emotion, deliver a line and inhabit the cramped confines of St James Theatre in New York while avoiding the unseen prowling cameras is a wonder to behold. But he is not one to embellish. He would sooner praise his fellow cast members, an intimidating ensemble that includes Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, Naomi Watts, Amy Ryan and Andrea Riseborough.

“Everywhere I turned there was a good actor. Edward is a dedicated actor and he is one of the most intelligent actors I have ever met.

“Then you do scenes with Amy Ryan. I have been an Amy Ryan fan for a long time and these are some of my favourite scenes.”

Inarritu has no time for cliché and as Birdman develops, Riggan’s craft as an actor becomes abundantly clear.

“Riggan could never have gotten to where he was by being a bad actor — that’s a different movie,” says Keaton. “Robert Downey Jr [plays Iron Man and] is a wonderful actor. Mark Ruffalo, who is in Spotlight with me, is a great actor and he’s the Hulk.

“That was one of the interesting things.

For me to play a bad actor would have been difficult to do because it would have looked s clownish and it cannot be true.” ■

December 5, 2014 Screen International 15

INTERVIEW JAKE GYLLENHAAL

Shot in the dark Jake Gyllenhaal tells Jeremy Kay why it was important for him to get under the skin of Nightcrawler’s sociopathic anti-hero, Lou Bloom

J

ake Gyllenhaal, 30 pounds lighter and on a diet that left him perpetually hungry, felt like a feral apparition as he ran to the Los Angeles set of Bold Films’ Nightcrawler each day.

“I made a decision that Lou was a coyote, scavenging around Los Angeles,” says Gyllenhaal, whose portrayal of the freelance crime journalist Lou Bloom has earned him some of the best reviews of his career and a lead actor Spirit Award nod.

“All the coyotes I have ever seen are starving and looking for the next thing to tear apart. It matched perfectly with who Lou was. He was hungry, figuratively speaking, in his search for power and was literally hungry.”

Nightcrawler is the directorial debut of screenwriter Dan Gilroy, whose credits include The Bourne Legacy and Tarsem’s The Fall. Gyllenhaal, who can pick any project he likes, was undeterred by Gilroy’s lack of directing experience. He read the script while shooting Prisoners in Atlanta, and three days later Gilroy was on a plane to the Deep South. Gyllenhaal was fascinated by the film-maker as soon as they met.

“I fell for the guy,” he says. “The screenplay is written by someone who is very boldly saying, ‘This is my movie to direct.’ It rolls forward like this huge stone that you know is heading towards some moment of destruction.

“I signed on and discussed my producer role,” Gyllenhaal continues. “[Bold Films] intended to

Writer-director Dan Gilroy on set with Jake Gyllenhaal

16 Screen International December 5, 2014

shoot a short schedule on a small budget in LA. It was similar to End Of Watch, which I had executive produced. I wanted to learn more and [Bold Films] obliged.”

Gyllenhaal’s enhanced role meant he was privy to conversations with financiers, international sales company Sierra/Affinity and eventual US distributor Open Road.

He was struck how the ability to influence the outcome of the project in more ways than one bore similarities to the ambitions of his onscreen persona in Nightcrawler.

“Lou had intentions to be the guy who owns the station that owns the camera. There’s a sense of producer aspiration for him and in that way it fit the character and was almost life imitating art and vice versa.”

Street smarts Although much of Bloom’s extreme behaviour is fictional, Gyllenhaal conducted his customary research to familiarise himself with the cameracarrying ‘nightcrawlers’ who patrol after-hours Los Angeles for accidents, shoot-outs, car chases and other nefarious nocturnal incidents.

“We spent a number of nights with Howard Raishbrook [a self-styled ‘stringer’ who become a technical adviser on the film], me and Dan and the DP [Robert Elswit],” says the actor-producer.

“Howard and his brother roam the streets for whatever footage they can get, not just accidents but things like grizzly bears. I had spent five

months on the streets with police officers from south Los Angeles for End Of Watch and I would occasionally see stringers at crime scenes.”

Bloom is thick-skinned, power-hungry and creepy, yet his drive informs the film’s most subversive theme. “It was so important to me and Dan that this be a success story,” says Gyllenhaal. “This was a character study of a success story where we hoped the audience — even in their resistance — would be rooting for him.

That was one of the first things Dan said to me, and I thought, ‘I love this guy.’”

“Lou is a character who has been created by the internet as opposed to human-to-human contact. One of the most beautiful directions Dan gave me was during my pitch to Rene on why I wanted to be on TV news,” he says referring to Rene Russo, who plays a network executive. “Dan said on one of the takes that I [should] ask her to marry me. It’s full of irony because Dan is married to Rene in real life.

“We were also looking for the thing that moved Lou, in that he has sociopathic tendencies. We were constantly asking ourselves, ‘Where’s the beauty here?’

“I even approached the crash scenes as Damien Hirst art. I approached it as a cinematographer, believing this shot is so beautiful and the body was part of that. We were always hanging onto the other side of the see-saw to pull it right back to the middle so it was more complicated, s somewhat confusing for the audience.” ■

Gyllenhaal takes to the streets as Lou Bloom

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‘This was a character study of a success story, where we hoped the audience would be rooting for him’ Jake Gyllenhaal

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December 5, 2014 Screen International 17

INTERVIEW TIMOTHY SPALL

Guided by the light

Timothy Spall talks to John Hazelton about tackling the biggest role of his career in Mr. Turner, becoming detective to ‘discover’ his character and the ever-present spectre of unemployment

I

n his typically self-effacing way, Timothy Spall confirms that playing the title role in Mike Leigh’s Mr. Turner was indeed a demanding job.

“Actors going on about how hard they work is never attractive, but yeah, it was probably the biggest challenge of my acting life,” says Spall, who has been one of the UK’s leading character actors for nearly 30 years. “And I knew it was going to be that, because I knew what we were going to have to do was a journey of discovery, as it always is with Mike.”

The film — which explores the last decades in the life of 19th century British ‘painter of light’ JMW Turner — is Spall’s fifth feature with writer-director Leigh, after Life Is Sweet, Secrets & Lies, Topsy-Turvy and All Or Nothing. It joins a

18 Screen International December 5, 2014

list of credits that also includes six Harry Potter films, a handful of US movies and dozens of UK films and TV series.

The earlier performances earned a string of Bafta and other nominations but Mr. Turner has put Spall squarely in the spotlight. Cannes Film Festival and New York Film Critics Circle have given him best actor awards already this year, and he has picked up his second European Film Awards nomination.

The ‘journey of discovery’ on Mr. Turner started with the improvisation process for which Leigh has become famous, an approach Spall describes as constructing a character “from ground zero, amalgamating from other characters that you have encountered in your life as templates for a human being that you then start building up”.

“You chuck everything in to create this character and then eventually what happens is the character starts dictating to you about the way it’s going to go.”

In this case, of course, there were the historical facts to take into account.

“We did have the luxury of a brilliant expert, Jacqueline Riding, in the time and the art,” says Spall, “but it was also down to the individual, and particularly me, to go off and do my detective work.

“There was a lot of information about how [Turner] looked and talked but there was nothing about how he felt.

That gave us a massive amount of dramatic license to create this complex psychological and emotional make-up.”

Comparing Turner to the modernday characters that he played in earlier Leigh films, Spall works up some of the

‘Although I’m getting a lot of attention it’s not going to turn me into something different all of a sudden’ Timothy Spall

intensity that comes out in his performance.

“You’re not talking about a taxi driver, as you were in All Or Nothing,” he says, “or a high-street photographer [the character he played in Secrets & Lies], you’re talking about one of the greatest artists the world has ever known. Not only that, but also a man who was very,

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very different to how you imagine him to be, incredibly contradictory.

“He was a working-class son of a barber, with an unreconstructed Cockney nature who also had this naturally polymath and inquisitive mind.”

In the end, “We realised Turner was a man of implosive intellect and implosive emotion who expressed himself mainly through what came out of the end of his arm.”

Follow the work With all the attention Mr. Turner has attracted, Spall concedes that for him “things are looking up”. Though he has not signed on for any new projects since the film was unveiled on the festival circuit and released in its first few markets — he most recently finished work on UK

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mini-series The Enfield Haunting — there are, he reports, “some very nice possibilities”.

That said, “I’m not knocking back offers from the studios or anything like that. Although I’m getting a lot of attention, it’s not going to turn me into something different all of a sudden. It’s lovely, but I’m still a middle-aged bloke — I’m not all of a sudden going to be turned into a young leading man.”

As a consummate working actor, Spall knows as well as any that in his business attention can be fleeting.

“There’s a wonderful device in the world that’s going to kick the stuffing and the bullshit out of any actor,” he says, “and it’s called unemployment. As soon as you get a little dose of that, Charlie Big s Trousers becomes Mr Humble.” ■

Timothy Spall and director Mike Leigh on the set of Mr. Turner

December 5, 2014 Screen International 19

AWARDS SPECIAL BOYHOOD

A family portrait

Photography by Matt Lankes

When Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette and Ellar Coltrane were cast in Richard Linklater’s audacious coming-of-age film, Boyhood, they soon realised each had the role of a lifetime. Jeremy Kay reports

Ellar Coltrane, year two of Boyhood

20 Screen International December 5, 2014

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E

llar Coltrane knows only too well that Richard Linklater took the risk of his career when the Boyhood director chose to cast the youngster in the lead role of Mason.

Linklater was familiar with Coltrane’s father, the touring musician Bruce Salmon, but otherwise it was a giant leap into the unknown. “I just went to an audition. I had done a few commercials and a small indie film in Texas,” recalls Coltrane. He was six when he was cast, seven when filming began in July 2002, and 19 when the production wrapped last year.

“I met Richard and he explained this bizarre concept as much as you can to a sixyear-old,” says Coltrane. “I probably went to six or seven call-backs. Richard described this as one of the most difficult decisions he ever had to make.

“At that age it was also a decision for my parents as well so he also talked to them.

They were artists who knew Rick a bit; they understood the project.”

Coltrane, who like Linklater resides in Austin, moved from place to place a lot as a child. The unorthodox lifestyle perhaps leant itself more readily to the demands of Boyhood. Linklater cast his daughter, Lorelei, as Coltrane’s on-screen sister Samantha and turned to two household names to round out the senior members of the family.

“Everything about this movie was untraditional,” says Patricia Arquette, who plays

Ethan Hawke, year two of Boyhood

Patricia Arquette, year four of Boyhood

Mason’s mother. “Usually they go through your agent but in this case Rick called me directly. We talked for 10 to 12 minutes before he asked me what I was going to do for the next 12 years. When he told me the idea, I wanted to be in it so badly.”

For Ethan Hawke it was a no-brainer. It was 2002 and he had just shot Tape with Linklater and prior to that collaborated with his friend on Before Sunrise. Two further Before… episodes would emerge during Boyhood’s lifespan.

“I’d known he was really interested in making a movie about childhood and was wrestling with the notion that every movie with a coming-of-age story tries to boil life into one perfect moment that synthesises growing up,” says Hawke. “Ultimately that’s a little fraudulent because it’s a series of events. So he told me he had this idea over 12 years. I just immediately thought it was a brilliant idea, I couldn’t believe nobody had done this before.”

Family ties The unique undertaking inevitably fostered an uncommon bond between its participants once shooting was under way.

“The idea was that it was first through 12th grade,” says Coltrane. “It became very intimate. When you work on an art project with people for any amount of time, you become like a family. This was over many »

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December 5, 2014 Screen International 21

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AWARDS SPECIAL BOYHOOD

years, so we had even more time to get to know each other.”

Arquette describes the Boyhood experience as something akin to a long-term relationship. Interstitial commitments came and went, but everyone worked it out and stuck to the plan. “The movie,” says Hawke, “is a triumph of patience and scheduling.” Indeed, Arquette and Hawke have earned two of the Boyhood’s five nominations in the Spirit Awards. The film won the audience award at the Gothams and best picture, director and supporting actress (Arquette) from the New York Film Critics Circle.

“I was doing this movie before I started [US TV show] Medium, so I told [Medium’s showrunners] I had a pre-existing commitment,” says Arquette. “A lot of times I would come back with a new haircut.”

Arquette’s conscientious single mother ultimately cuts a battle-weary yet proud onscreen figure, an earnest counterpoint to the more accessible charms of Hawke’s goodnatured, initially immature, father.

“When Rick first called me about it and told me I was going to be the mum, we talked about her trajectory. It reminded me of a lot of different people in my life. She was an amalgam of different people.”

The actress began to form an image of who the mother needed to be, readily admitting she had no idea of all the events that would shape the character’s life over the course of the production.

Dreams of a life Arquette’s first encounter with Coltrane triggered a small role-play. “When we first started and I first met Patricia to establish that familial relationship, she took Lorelei and I for the weekend,” recalls Coltrane. “Rick let us stay in his house and she played mum for the weekend and made us mac and cheese.

“From the beginning we all had similar ways of looking at the world,” continues Coltrane. “We were constantly talking about our own lives and sharing stories and memories of things that had happened to us over the previous year and before the project had even started.

“That’s a level of openness you don’t necessarily talk about, even with a friend. It was an amazing experience to go through with anyone, especially with such an amazing group of people and to have this constant fiction running parallel to our own lives. It was an outlet and a chance to reflect and explore what was going on in our own lives.”

Hawke relished the chance to dive into his role. “I knew I was being offered something that no actor had ever been offered before, which was to use time as your clay and shape a character over a decade.

“When I think about who my dad was when I was six

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Graduation day in year 11

‘It was an outlet and a chance to reflect and explore what was going on in our own lives’ Ellar Coltrane

and when I graduated high school, they’re two different men… a lot of us feel that way and if I could capture that in a screen performance it would be something worth watching. It was thrilling to embark on it. It took years before it stopped feeling like a crazy experiment.”

The oddity of the undertaking was such that it was difficult to explain to outsiders.

Indeed the project’s very nature meant it tended to hold little interest for those not involved. “I cannot tell you how few people were interested,” says Arquette. “Their eyes would glaze over when we told them it was about a family and a boy growing up.”

“They didn’t swear me to secrecy or anything,” says Coltrane. “I certainly told my friends. There was a point when I stopped talking to people about it. Ten years ago it was a pretty abstract concept.”

Rehearse, shoot, repeat Year in, year out the cast would reconvene in Texas, rehearse and workshop their lines for up to a week and then shoot for two or three days. “Rinse and repeat,” as producer Cathleen Sutherland says.

By and large they stuck to the script.

“We never really improvised on camera although we would have done that in the camping Star Wars discussion — there’s probably a good 10 minutes of footage of us talking,” says Coltrane.

Linklater had fashioned a tale so intimate and overarching that the actors did not want to deviate from the story.

“It was about the architecture,” says Hawke. “I wanted to do a portrait of fatherhood. I was a child of divorce and I have been a

parent of children going through divorce. It’s a subject matter that’s extremely interesting to me and I have strong feelings about it.

“Most movies have to centre on crisis, but Rick had an idea that liberated us from false drama. The modern movie doesn’t revolve around the mother’s fight against pancreatic cancer.

“That’s the experience of living. We’re always terrified something horrible is going to happen tomorrow. Sometimes things happen but most of the time things happen averagely.”

Coltrane admits to times when he felt apathetic towards the endeavour — “I think everybody is when they’re 16” — but says it was an extremely positive experience overall. “It was fun.”

As the end of production drew closer, nobody wanted to let go. “It’s the only movie of my life when I can say I felt sad when it came to an end,” says Hawke. “Movies are like little sprints — you make it and want to share it with people. This one was so much fun and so special to all of us.”

The world premiere at Sundance 2014 was the first time many of the cast had seen Boyhood together, let alone with an audience.

“It was like there were six different parts of me watching it at the same time,” says Arquette. “I was seeing the scenes I wasn’t in and watching myself change, which is part of what I wanted to do.

“As an actress you get arrested in people’s minds, especially if you start when you’re younger. If you’re an ingénue, people want to freeze you there in this sexualised area and part of what I loved about this was watching this boy grow and this little girl change, but also watching Ethan and I growing older.”

“People put a lot of work and love into the project,” says Coltrane, “so to see the stands ing ovation at Sundance was incredible.” ■

December 5, 2014 Screen International 23

AWARDS SPECIAL THE IMITATION GAME

Crack the code The Imitation Game brings the story of a little-known hero, who changed the course of the Second World War, to the big screen.

Andreas Wiseman talks to the team behind the film

Morten Tyldum on the set of The Imitation Game

W

alking through Potsdamer Platz during Berlin’s European Film Market in February 2014, two executives from The Weinstein Company (TWC), deep in conversation, were approached by a journalist. “‘What’s hot?,” the reporter asked.

“The Imitation Game,” replied the pair, with knowing grins.

TWC had just splashed out $7.5m for US rights to the film about brilliant English mathematician and logician, Alan Turing, who helped crack the Enigma code during the Second World War and paved the way for modern computing, before tragically taking his own life in 1954 after being prosecuted for homosexuality.

24 Screen International December 5, 2014

The EFM deal was the culmination of a long chase for TWC. “TWC, and Harvey [Weinstein] in particular, had always been interested in acquiring the title,” reveals the film’s producer Teddy Schwarzman of Black Bear Pictures.

“They tried to acquire it at script stage and again during the shoot. We knew there was interest but remained steadfast in wanting to secure a US distributor after the fact. They took a big risk acquiring the rights after 20 minutes of footage in Berlin.”

It was a promo that might not have even happened if director Morten Tyldum had got his way.

“I find it so painful to see my own film cut down to 18 minutes,” reveals the Norwegian

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‘The Weinstein Company took a big risk acquiring the rights after 20 minutes of footage in Berlin’ Teddy Schwarzman, Black Bear Pictures

“Frankly, they weren’t expecting the screenplay to have the reaction it did or have studios interested or huge directors and A-list actors involved,” says Schwarzman about his fellow producers’ volte-face.

“Then there’s the politics of agencies that dictate who gets permission and who doesn’t,” adds the New York-based financier, who was prepared to stump up the film’s entire $15m budget. “I was on the ‘doesn’t’ list, which is understandable given the reception the industry had to the screenplay.”

When it came down to it, Schwarzman’s vision for the film chimed with that of his fellow producers. “It didn’t seem to make sense to me for this project to end up at a major studio, let alone one where they were talking about a US actor playing Alan Turing. It felt like a project that needed to be protected, needed to be made independently, and it was important the material be made in the UK with an all-British cast.”

Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing

director. “I tried to stop that promo... It just proves that directors shouldn’t be a part of marketing and selling a film,” he says with a laugh.

The truth is that by 2014, The Imitation Game had long-since proved itself a project the industry believed was worth taking a risk on. The script’s eye-catching scope and remarkable personal stories had led to a plethora of suitors.

Despite going on to attract some of the industry’s biggest names, the project had relatively humble beginnings in the shape of first-time feature producers Nora Grossman and Ido Ostrowsky and first-time screenwriter Graham Moore. The script was among the hottest in Hollywood for at least a

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‘It’s about celebrating someone who was different, which makes for a contemporary and important story. It’s about the tragedy of prejudice’ Morten Tyldum, director

year, with Warner Bros initially snapping up rights. However, the fit wasn’t right, as US screenwriter Moore explains. “Ultimately we felt lucky to get away from the higherbudget, studio version of the film. Our intimate character drama didn’t seem quite right at a studio.”

All Is Lost producer and financier Schwarzman joined the project in 2012 after having tried to get involved for some time. “Back in fall 2011, I reached out and tried to option it but a lot of companies were doing the same. I tried to stay close to it. Eventually, I got word that it was available again and reached out aggressively. Previously I’d never been able to get in the room with the producers but this time my voice was heard.

Viking quest Tyldum, known for his brilliantly slick chasethriller Headhunters was not an obvious choice to direct the film but the production quickly realised he was the right one.

“We originally set out to find a British director given the fact we had an American writer and three American producers,” says Schwarzman. “It just happened that a Norwegian Viking approached us and fell in love with the project and became obsessed and needed to tell it. He became our director within 48 hours despite the fact that objective data was trying to guide us towards a British director.”

“It was a pretty well-known project in Hollywood,” recalls Tyldum. “My agent said, ‘It’s probably not what you’re looking for,’ but it was such a beautiful script and I was blown away by it.

“You always find something that’s personal to yourself,” he continues. “For me it »

December 5, 2014 Screen International 25

AWARDS SPECIAL THE IMITATION GAME

(Above) Morten Tyldum on set; (left) Charles Dance as Commander Denniston; (below) Keira Knightley as code-breaker Joan Clarke

was a movie about celebrating someone who was different and how important that is, which makes for a very contemporary and important story. It is about the tragedy of prejudice.”

Tyldum, feeling something of an outsider in Hollywood, related to the predicament of the often-isolated, ultimately ostracised Turing. “Coming to Hollywood and trying to figure things out meant there was something at that time that made it very relatable.”

That said, he hadn’t previously heard of the brilliant mathematician and cryptanalyst Turing. “I always loved history and I thought I knew history really well, and that became one of the reasons I was so obsessed with the project. I was shocked how little I knew and how much I wasn’t aware of,” he admits.

“For people in the UK, Turing is far more well known but not well known enough. His achievements are so staggering; not only for his war-time achievement but at the same

26 Screen International December 5, 2014

time he theorised a computer when he was 23 years old in the 1930s. He theorised the basis of all computer science and the laws of computing.”

Fast-rising Benedict Cumberbatch was attached to play Turing soon after Tyldum came on board. While he was not quite a household name at that time, Tyldum and the production had no doubts about the Brit’s acting credentials.

StudioCanal were similarly taken with the film and the subject, snapping up UK and French rights during Berlin 2013 (the company might have got to fully finance the film were it not for the producers’ experience with Warner Bros).

For StudioCanal UK CEO Danny Perkins, Turing’s relatively low profile represented an exciting opportunity. “You could look

at the fact Turing wasn’t well known in two ways. You can see it as a story the mainstream doesn’t care about, or a story they should know about.

“The story is so extraordinary on a personal level and the stakes of what they were doing at Bletchley [Park, where the codebreakers were based] couldn’t have been bigger,” he continues. “Then there was the whole fact they weren’t allowed to talk about it. In today’s world where people happily tweet about what they had for lunch, to do something so incredible and then not tell anyone about it or be given any credit for it makes this so remarkable and part of the reason it resonated with us.”

Setting the tone During the shoot, capturing the right mood was among Tyldum’s biggest challenges. “Some of the lighter scenes were particularly hard to shoot because you need to get the tone right,” he recalls.

“Like the scene between Alan and Commander Denniston [played by Charles Dance], which is a six-page, five-minute dialogue between two seated men. You can’t chase the humour too much. You’re laughing at the awkwardness between Alan Turing and the commander but if you miss, it can go really wrong. You

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have to be true to the character. I find those scenes are most challenging, even more than the bigger scenes.”

The film’s score proved another obstacle for production. “One of the biggest struggles was getting our music right in post-production,” says Schwarzman. “We were working with another composer before Alexandre Desplat but it became a hard film to find the right sound for. Eventually, we screened the film for Alexandre who loved it but had to pass on it. Then we got a call a week later saying his next film had been pushed by a month and he could give us three weeks to try and score the whole film. He worked 24 hours a day out of Paris then LA and London.

It completely changed the feel of the film.”

Final sums The Imitation Game’s many layers — it shifts between Turing’s childhood, his war-time code-breaking and post-war suicide — are part of its appeal but have also led to marketing challenges, acknowledges Harvey Weinstein. “There are so many layers here and it would have been very easy to lose focus on one of them in service of another. That issue trickles down to the marketing and positioning of the film — it’s a film about a brilliant

‘The tech community has supported this movie in droves.

Google created a special trailer with a codebreaking puzzle’ Harvey Weinstein, TWC

scientist, a war film, a thriller and a film about civil rights all wrapped in one.”

In the US, the film has benefited from targeted screenings, including for digital-world tastemakers. “The tech community has come out supporting this movie in droves,” adds Weinstein. “We showed the film early on at Charlie Rose’s Aspen Ideas Festival and then screened it in Silicon Valley for people like Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and on the campuses of Google, Twitter and Yahoo!. The response has been incredible.

Google decided to partner with us and created a special trailer with a code-breaking puzzle.”

The UK campaign has been similarly well judged, with StudioCanal rolling out regional screenings alongside the glitzy BFI London Film Festival opening night gala.

The campaign has caught audience attention with box office standing at an impressive $14.9m (£9.5m) in the UK after three weeks, plus $500,000 from four sites over its opening weekend in the US. The real story behind the making of The Imitation Game is one of the industry mesmerised by a remarkable man and his work. Audiences are now starting to unders stand why. ■

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December 5, 2014 Screen International 27

INTERVIEW NICK BROOMFIELD

B

efore Tales of The Grim Sleeper, most people had not heard of alleged serial killer Lonnie Franklin Jr. He is on trial for killing 10 young black women in South Central Los Angeles — but the victims could number in the hundreds over a 25-year period.

The fact Franklin is not a household name does not surprise director Nick Broomfield. “It was almost like a genocide taking place and there was virtually no reporting on it,” he says.

This film — which has been shortlisted for the best documentary feature Oscar — changes that situation. The title is reflective of its structure; it is not a straight biography of Franklin, instead it is the portrait of a neighbourhood and people forgotten by the rest of society, giving voices to those around Franklin including his victims, with Broomfield shooting in his usual first-person style.

As a white guy from Britain, Broomfield certainly stands out in the predominantly black neighbourhood, plagued by poverty, crack cocaine and Los Angeles Police Department neglect. “It doesn’t just apply to LA, look at Ferguson. It’s representative of a widespread attitude, it’s a new form of Jim Crow [segregation laws] operating,” Broomfield says of the marginalised subjects.

Entry point A former prostitute and crack addict named Pam Brooks becomes Broomfield’s guide into the world of impoverished South Central.

“She enabled us to be accepted in the community. We needed someone who was from that world. It’s like what a fixer might do but more.”

To Broomfield’s credit he admits Brooks is basically running the production at one point in the film; she is also a hugely compelling force on screen.

“Without Pam, it would have been an incredibly different film,” the director says. “She’s got this Richard Pryor-esque motormouth. She’s charismatic and very wise and unbelievably articulate.”

During initial filming, Franklin’s friends and neighbours mostly stand up for him. But later in the film they start to open up about his darker side. “When you make a film it’s like a catalyst, you’re asking things they don’t normally get asked and it gets the mind going.

“This is the first time they’d been asked these questions, the first time talking about their world and their feelings. And they tell stories so beautifully,” Broomfield adds. Two of Franklin’s friends go so far as to show the accused’s personal collection of homemade pornographic pictures.

One of the most moving parts of the

28 Screen International December 5, 2014

GRIM REALITY Nick Broomfield tells Wendy Mitchell why his doc Tales Of The Grim Sleeper is about a whole neighbourhood, not just one killer

Lonnie Franklin Jr is accused of killing 10 women in South Central Los Angeles — but the figure could be far higher

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film is seeing marginalised women — transients, drug addicts and prostitutes mostly — given their chance to tell their stories on camera. “Joe Bini, Werner Herzog’s editor, edited that sequence,” Broomfield explains. “It’s like a chorus of women. They didn’t have homes we could film them in so we did it in our office. Why not film them looking great?

In some ways, that sequence is like a payoff for all of Pam’s work.”

Another key collaborator on the film was Broomfield’s son, Barney Broomfield, who served as cinematographer.

The younger Broomfield has a strong career in his own right, and joined Grim Sleeper after shooting Hubert Sauper’s We Come As Friends in Sudan.

“You can have atomic arguments as father and son but we got on incredibly well,” says Broomfield with a laugh.

“Pam and Barney really got on and that’s one of the reasons the film worked out so well. Barney amused them. If you amuse people, they will put up with a lot.”

The film has screened in Telluride, Toronto, New York and AFI Fest and HBO will broadcast in the US in 2015.

Submarine Entertainment handles international sales.

Broomfield likes shooting in the US, where his credits include Aileen: Life And Death Of A Serial Killer, Biggie & Tupac and Sarah Palin: You Betcha!.

“I like telling documentary subjects from the US — it starts the pace for the world,” he says.

‘It was almost like a genocide taking place and there was virtually no reporting on it’ Nick Broomfield, film-maker (above)

But next he is headed to Tanzania for the shoot of fiction project The Catastrophist, a four-part series for the BBC. Broomfield and Marc Hoeferlin are writing the script, which is based on Ronan Bennett’s 1960, Belgian Congo-set novel about the love affair between a jaded writer and a young idealistic journalist who are forced to take sides when a violent civil war breaks out.

Broomfield has ventured into fiction in the past, working on films including Ghosts and Battle For Haditha. Yet he admits he is not a typical drama director, and says, “I like telling stories in a different way, it has to be something I can s bring something to.” ■

(Above) Broomfield’s “fixer” Pam Brooks; Franklin Jr faces the courts

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December 5, 2014 Screen International 29

INTERVIEW STEVE JAMES

A life in movies Documentarian Steve James talks to John Hazelton about capturing the career and spirit of Roger Ebert while avoiding the pitfalls of hagiography

B

efore he made Life Itself, Steve James had what he describes as only “a very casual professional relationship” with the documentary’s subject, Roger Ebert.

And that, James suggests, gave him the freedom to paint a fuller picture of the influential US film critic, who died in 2013 after a well-chronicled struggle with cancer.

“I knew from the get-go that it was going to be an admiring portrait,” says James, whose award-winning 1994 documentary Hoop Dreams had been famously championed by Ebert, “but I also didn’t want it to be hagiography. I wanted to show, as best I could, the man and some of the rough edges that he clearly had and the growth that he went through.”

James’s starting point was the memoir — also titled Life Itself — that Ebert had published in 2011, years after cancer had taken away his ability to speak and necessitated the removal of his lower jaw.

The memoir — excerpts from which are read in the film by an actor emulating Ebert’s voice — is “perhaps Roger’s highest accomplishment as writing”, says James.

“It has a kind of poignancy to it. So I wanted to achieve a similar thing in the film. The idea of seeing his life in the present and using that as a springboard to the past was part of the original thinking.”

Moments in time Archive footage was readily available thanks to Ebert’s rise to TV fame in the 1970s, when he began co-hosting — with fellow critic Gene Siskel — the succession of film review shows that made “two thumbs up” a movie criticism catchphrase.

With the archival material, “I really wanted to put you back in the moments of his life,” James explains, “to show what a vibrant and active and hilarious and contentious guy he could be.”

On-camera interviews — with Ebert’s wife Chaz, friends and colleagues from his Chicago newspaper days, other critics and film-makers including Martin Scorsese (one of Life Itself’s executive producers), Errol Morris and Werner Herzog — gave James another way to round out the portrait, which has been shortlisted for the best documentary feature Oscar.

The director had been planning to get

30 Screen International December 5, 2014

‘I knew it would be difficult to watch. This was a whole different level of candour that Roger was willing to do, and wanted to do’ Steve James, film-maker

his ‘springboard to the past’ from freshly shot footage of his subject at work and at home, but things changed when Ebert was hospitalised with a fractured hip in late 2012.

That meant the new footage had to be shot over the four months — the last months of his life, as it turned out — that Ebert spent in hospital and then a rehabilitation centre.

While the footage shows Ebert never lost his determination or wit, it also shows some of the medical procedures and painful rehab he had to endure.

James says he always knew “some people would view the film as having too much of that”. He adds: “But I’ve been heartened by the number of people who feel it’s an absolutely essential part of the story, and a moving part of the story. It said so much about his courage, his perseverance, his sense of humour.

“I knew it would be difficult to watch because for all of Roger’s candour in his public life this was a whole different level of candour that he was willing to do, and in fact wanted to do.”

Two thumbs up James, an Academy Award nominee whose documentary credits also include Stevie, The Interrupters and a segment of the anthology We The Economy: 20 Short Films You Can’t Afford To Miss, says he had complete autonomy in the making of Life Itself. Unlike some famous or film-savvy documentary subjects, Ebert set no ground rules.

What James did not have was the chance to show the finished film — which premiered at Sundance in February and saw a US theatrical release this summer — to Ebert himself.

“Normally,” says the documentarian, “near the end of a project, I show the main subjects the film and if they have issues with stuff we talk about it. Sometimes I’ve changed things because they’ve been convincing; a lot of times I’ve said, ‘I hear you, but it has to stay in.’

“I think that process would have been really interesting to do with Roger because I feel confident he would not have said, ‘You’re being too hard on me,’ here or there.

If anything, he might have said, ‘You could s push that further.’” ■

Life Itself

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December 5, 2014 Screen International 31

REVIEWS Highlights of the week’s new films in Review. For full reviews coverage, see Screendaily.com

IDFA Reviews in brief Something Better To Come Dir Hanna Polak. Den-Pol. 2014. 110mins

A strikingly visceral and plaintively moving documentary that is arresting right from its first powerful moments, Polak’s Something Better To Come is a film likely to attract distributor and festival attention as it weaves the story of a young girl growing up in the detritus of Europe’s largest landfill site just 12 miles from the centre of Moscow. Polak, who made the acclaimed documentary The Children Of Leningradsky, about street kids around a Moscow train station, clearly has an affinity with Russia’s disenfranchised youth, and for her new film has spent a remarkable 14 years following Yula and her family as they struggle to survive in the bleakest of conditions. Hundreds of people live on the landfill, scavenging for food and shelter.

Mark Adams CONTACT FILMS TRANSIT INTERNATIONAL office@filmstransit.com

Those Who Feel The Fire Burning Dir Morgan Knibbe. Neth. 2014. 74mins

There is a visceral intensity to Knibbe’s ambitious debut feature that marks him as a talent to watch.

The subject matter — the plight of refugees — may be a familiar one much tackled by documentary film-makers, but his take has a vibrant and immersive style that makes it a unique viewing experience. Those Who Feel The Fire Burning was one of the buzz films of IDFA, mainly for Knibbe’s flowing visual style as his camera dips in and out of events and lives. Some of the visual metaphors are heavy handed (such as one man wandering among wrecked boats) but there is subtle questioning of how Europe handles these lost refugees.

Mark Adams CONTACT BALDR FILM

www.baldrfilm.nl

Chameleon Dir Ryan Mullins. Can. 2014. 78mins

The unorthodox tactics of crusading Ghanaian investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas — whose mantra is “naming, shaming and jailing” — is entertainingly brought to light in Mullins’ engaging documentary. Though the title Chameleon does not relate to his name (or even nickname), it does reflect his persona. He wears a disguise whenever he is in public, and throughout the film he remains unidentifiable. And for good reason — he favours going undercover to expose criminality and has made more than a few enemies along the way.

Mark Adams CONTACT DOGWOOF GLOBAL www.dogwoofglobal.com

32 Screen International December 5, 2014

Black Sea Dir Kevin Macdonald. UK. 2014. 115mins

An appropriately tense and claustrophobic submarine thriller, Kevin Macdonald’s Black Sea has an almost Cold War sensibility to it, as it pitches a crew against each other deep below the waves. Though a contemporary story, it plays out like an old-fashioned dramatic thriller, and while lacking standout action sequences it sustains itself thanks to atmosphere and performances rather than special effects and grandstanding sequences.

Jude Law, sporting an impressive Aberdeen accent, is the glue that binds the film, and it is testament to his skills as a — how shall we put it — more mature actor, that his intelligence and intensity shines through, and that even in the grim, sweaty and dank confines his innate charisma holds its own.

The submarine movie genre tends to tick a few familiar plot boxes, and while Black Sea is no real exception, at its gritty heart it is more a class-war story of ordinary working men taking revenge on money-grabbing bosses through extraordinary risks. And just like The Wages Of Fear (and its remake Sorcerer) — which the film-makers reference — it relishes the visceral and brutal realities of underwater working stiffs making a dangerous buck.

Law plays experienced former Navy submarine captain Robinson, who is laid-off by a salvage company after 11 years of service. On hearing the story of a German U-boat packed with Second World War-era Russian gold sitting in the Georgian depths of the Black Sea, Robinson agrees to head a misfit crew to go and get the booty.

With a crew made up half by Russians and half by

Scots (plus volatile Aussie diver Fraser, played by Ben Mendelsohn), they board a ramshackle but just-aboutseaworthy vintage Russian submarine and head off into the Black Sea, evading detection from the Russian navy and trying to locate the lost U-boat, which lies precariously balanced deep on the sea-floor.

Issues of language and miscommunication — the Russian crew are the only ones who can read the controls or really understand the craft — permeate, and as the claustrophobic tension mounts so does the underlying bitterness between the two groups of men.

A violent flashpoint threatens to cause a major rift, but the lure of the gold is still there and when they finally find the Nazi craft, there is a glimmer of hardwon success for the men.

Law is nicely steadfast and stoic as the one man trying to keep the bickering and increasingly brutal crew together. Grigoriy Dobrygin (seen recently in A Most Wanted Man) grows into his role as the taciturn Morosov, while Michael Smiley brings welcome humour as the wisecracking Reynolds.

What gives the film its impressive dramatic heft is the striking production design and cinematography that do much to sustain the visceral atmosphere. There was clearly a modest special-effects budget — there are a few underwater model/effects shots that could have come from any sub film — but the interior footage is tough, tense and genuinely gripping.

Mark Adams CONTACT SIERRA/AFFINITY

www.sierra-affinity.com

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unbroken

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Angelina Jolie offers a sombre and reverential war-time tale about Louis Zamperini’s triumph over adversity See page 34

Spectacle runs amok in Ridley Scott’s latest biblical epic, burying an iconic tale in lavish overkill See page 35

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Reviews in brief Get Santa Dir/scr Christopher Smith. UK. 2014. 102mins

A warm-hearted bit of festive fun but with a smart, realistic subtext that takes Father Christmas into — of all places — prison, UK family film Get Santa is a thoroughly enjoyable romp, blessed with a spot-on performance by Jim Broadbent who is irresistible in the role of Santa Claus. Produced by Liza Marshall for Scott Free Films, Get Santa is written and directed by Christopher Smith, who makes a savvy change of direction from genre films such as Creep, Severance and Black Death. He is completely at ease with this ‘what if…’ project and comes up with an engaging spin on a much-filmed subject. Perhaps closer to films such as The Santa Clause than frothier festive fare, this is fantasy with a grittier edge.

Mark Adams CONTACT ALTITUDE FILM SALES www.altitudefilment.com

The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies Dir Peter Jackson. US-New Zealand. 2014. 144mins

The final chapter of The Hobbit proves to be very much of a piece with the trilogy’s first two instalments: robustly entertaining, occasionally affecting, sometimes thrilling, not exactly groundbreaking.

From the start, the challenge facing director Peter Jackson when he signed on to this franchise would be trying to live up to the legacy of The Lord Of The Rings and, as The Battle Of The Five Armies makes plain, his Hobbit films never fully escaped the large shadow cast by his previous trilogy. That said, managed expectations are all that’s necessary: this satisfying film showcases Jackson’s potent skill for sculpting large-scale action scenes, even if the freshness of his vision has faded.

The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies will be shooting for a $1bn worldwide gross, which was achieved by 2003’s The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King and 2012’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (last year’s The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug made ‘merely’ $960m). Although this Warner Bros offering does not have the holiday season to itself, awareness of the JRR Tolkien series is high. And as this is the final instalment, The Battle Of The Five Armies seems all but certain to garner major returns.

Picking up where The Desolation Of Smaug left off, the story consists mostly of two significant battle sequences. In the first, the citizens of Lake-town must contend with the rampaging dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch). In the second, which comprises most of the final half of the film, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and his companions, including the valiant Dwarf, Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage),

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square off with a collection of rival armies for control of Erebor and its vast treasures.

Despite featuring different central characters — with the notable exception of Gandalf (played, as always, with regal grandeur by Ian McKellen) — The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit have been filmed by Jackson with considerable tonal and visual continuity. Relying on sweeping vistas of Middle-earth, the film-maker has opted for a grand, almost mythic canvas in which character nuance takes a backseat to timeless themes such as honour, love and self-sacrifice.

Just as with the first two Hobbit movies, The Battle Of The Five Armies offers plenty of expert action sequences and solemn grappling between good and evil, but it does not do any of it in a way that is appreciably more stunning than what occurred in The Lord Of The Rings. That fatigue of familiarity can leave the viewer suitably roused by what’s on screen and yet slightly underwhelmed.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact The Hobbit’s new characters lacked the snap of those in the original trilogy. Whereas Elijah Wood’s Frodo and Viggo Mortensen’s Aragorn were a nifty juxtaposition of naïf and warrior, Bilbo and Thorin’s interplay is less dynamic. Though they are both good actors with a gift for pathos, Freeman and Armitage are somewhat swallowed up by the action, only really allowed to shine near the end once the warring ceases and their characters’ bond is finally allowed to be addressed.

Tim Grierson CONTACT WARNER BROS

Nobody From Nowhere Dir Matthieu Delaporte. Fr. 2014. 118mins

Mathieu Kassovitz gives a multi-pronged performance as a realtor with a hell of a secret life in Nobody From Nowhere (Un Illustre Inconnu). This well-crafted thriller adds a tasty little twist or two to the screen repertoire of creepy loners. The script is enjoyably deft, as the opening sequence sees the protagonist put his head in an oven before turning on the gas. The story then rewinds to show how he reached this point. Kassovitz is great fun to watch as the downbeat master of disguise, the movie’s structure is satisfying and the suspense lasts until the final frames.

Lisa Nesselson CONTACT PATHE INTERNATIONAL

www.pathe.com

Dying Of The Light Dir/scr Paul Schrader. US. 2014. 95mins

It is easy to see what a tangled production history has done to Dying Of The Light, which arrives on screen as a mostly conventional — and mostly unexciting — spy thriller with an awkward existential/political subplot. Writer-director Paul Schrader — who has claimed the film was re-edited without his input — and star Nicolas Cage provide some marquee value, but their names probably will not be enough to stop this oddity getting lost in the awards season crush. The film centres on Cage’s Evan Lake, a veteran CIA agent who is being forced to retire. When Lake and his spy protégé Shultz (Anton Yelchin) find evidence that Lake’s nemesis Banir (Alexander Karim) has resurfaced, they set off on an intercontinental quest for revenge.

John Hazelton CONTACT RED GRANITE INTERNATIONAL www.redgraniteinternational.com

December 5, 2014 Screen International 33

»

REVIEWS

Reviews in brief The Crossing: Part 1 Dir John Woo. China. 2014. 128mins

Woo’s first directorial offering in four years is a grand scale war-time romance chronicling the plight of three unrelated couples whose lives become entwined during the Chinese Civil War. As was the case with the director’s 2008 twoparter, Red Cliff, the eponymous event — in this case the tragic 1949 sinking of Chinese steamer Taiping — is still to come, as this first instalment delivers two hours of detailed set-up, with its feet firmly on terra firma. Despite a conspicuous lack of ocean-bound action, The Crossing: Part 1 is awash with romance, conflict and drama as Woo positions his major players on both sides of the Taiwan Strait in anticipation of the fateful sailing.

An internationally celebrated cast of Asian performers including Zhang Ziyi, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Huang Xiaoming bring weight to a well-balanced script from Lust, Caution scribe Wang Huiling, and top drawer technical credentials across the board ensure The Crossing will be a major player at the Asian box office through the holiday season. The film certainly delivers as star-laden festive entertainment, but as the latest in a long line of Chinese war-time epics, one feels The Crossing will need the fireworks promised in its second instalment to rise above the competition.

Unbroken Dir Angelina Jolie. US. 2014. 137mins

James Marsh CONTACT Huayi Brothers Media Corp www.huayimedia.com

Fat Pizza Vs Housos Dir/scr Paul Fenech. Aus. 2014. 99mins

Fenech makes Australian gross-out television series as the writer, director, producer and star of SBS’s Fat Pizza and Housos, both of which feature a host of outrageous characters from the outersuburban backblocks of Sydney. Though baffling to some, these broad comedy shows have fiercely loyal viewers who are ready to support transitions to theatrical release. Fat Pizza was third (with $3.1m) on the 2003 box office chart of Australianmade movies, while Housos vs Authority (2012) opened strongly but settled for $1.14m. Here in Fat Pizza Vs Housos, the unstoppable Fenech pits his two large casts against each other in a very loud, very confusing, non-stop running battle, featuring endless swearing, shouting, lusting and boozing.

Though unlikely to attract box-office attention abroad — the feature’s lack of an international sales agent is unsurprising — there is a brazen, swaggering aggression to the movie that marks it as 21st century multicultural Australian. There is endless rushing about and plenty of clunky Three Stooges sound effects. Most of the minor actors shout to throat-shredding effect, and there is vigorous camerawork and a non-stop soundtrack of metal and heavy rock tracks. An end caption threatens a further sequel: Fat Pizza And Housos Vs Authority. We have been warned.

Frank Hatherley CONTACT STOLEN PRODUCTIONS www.facebook.com/housostv/info

34 Screen International December 5, 2014

With some big names behind the camera and lesser known talents on screen, Angelina Jolie’s eagerly anticipated Unbroken turns out to be a sombre and reverential — perhaps a bit too reverential for its own dramatic good — account of the early life of Louis Zamperini, the US Olympic athlete who survived more than two years in Second World War Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. Already being seen as an Oscar contender thanks to its impressive pedigree and uplifting true story, this lengthy drama will probably need the help of awards season if it is to become more than a mid-level box-office performer.

Global distributor Universal has opted for a wide US release (with a PG-13 rating) on Christmas Day, pitting it against Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper and other adult-oriented awards contenders. A multinational cast should help during the film’s international rollout early in the new year but the Second World War theme might still be a tricky sell.

Joel and Ethan Coen, Richard LaGravenese (Behind The Candelabra) and William Nicholson (Gladiator) all helped shape a script based on Laura Hillenbrand’s eponymous bestselling — and widely translated — book about Zamperini, who died last July aged 97.

Beginning with a thrillingly shot air battle involving Zamperini (played by the UK’s Jack O’Connell) and the rest of the crew of a US bomber, the film intercuts airborne action footage with scenes from its subject’s early life: a wayward childhood as the son of Italian immigrants in California, his emergence as a promising runner and an appearance at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The crash of the crew’s plane over the Pacific leads to a lengthy segment with Zamperini and two fellow airmen adrift in a raft and barely surviving attacks by sharks and a passing Japanese fighter.

Capture by the Japanese navy leads to another extended segment in a brutal PoW camp, where Zam-

perini first encounters a commander (played by the Japanese musician known as Miyavi) who takes a sadistic interest in his famous American captive.

Transfer to another camp, with the same commander in charge, results in even more brutal treatment for the prisoners (played by, among others, Australia’s Jai Courtney and the UK’s Luke Treadaway). The story ends with the war and Zamperini’s return to the US. Directing her second dramatic feature, Jolie does not vary the pace or tone much during the raft and camp sequences and while she mostly avoids PoW movie clichés she does not find much to put in their place to explain Zamperini’s fortitude (early hints that religious faith played a part are not followed up).

O’Connell (who was noticed last year in UK crime drama Starred Up) and Miyavi both show considerable promise, though it remains to be seen whether they attract their own awards season attention. More likely, perhaps, is that voters will respond to the behind-thescenes contributors, among them Roger Deakins, whose cinematography gives Unbroken a satisfyingly classical feel, and composer Alexandre Desplat, who provides a sparse but effective score.

John Hazelton CONTACT UNIVERSAL PICTURES

www.screendaily.com

Exodus: Gods And Kings Dir Ridley Scott. US. 2014. 150mins

Spectacle run amok, Exodus: Gods And Kings is so big and brawny that it’s almost laughably gargantuan. Mistaking massive amounts of CGI and epically dour performances for historical gravitas, Ridley Scott’s latest wants to tell the story of Moses with the scope of a blockbuster but the soul of a gritty character drama. It leaves us with a self-serious movie in which the filmmaker buries an iconic tale in lavish overkill.

This Fox release will hope to capitalise on Scott’s connection to Gladiator, which at least provides viewers with a swords-and-sandals comparison. Exodus’s star, Christian Bale, had his biggest hits as part of the Batman franchise, but he has also enjoyed commercial success with American Hustle. Audience familiarity with the Moses story — whether or not that extends beyond the 10 Commandments — should play a factor as well.

Set around 1300bc, Exodus takes us to the time of the Egyptian pharaohs, as dying leader Seti (John Turturro) fears what will happen to his kingdom after his passing.

His son, Ramses (Joel Edgerton), is an immature, impulsive young man, while Ramses’ loyal friend Moses (Bale) is a worthier heir to the throne, although

his bloodline guarantees that cannot happen. Once Seti dies, a shocking revelation is revealed: Moses, who believed he was Egyptian, discovers he is Hebrew, which automatically makes him a second-class citizen.

Banished from the palace, Moses loses his sense of identity — but he finds his calling when years later he has a vision from God asking him to free his fellow Hebrews who are enslaved by the Egyptians Aiming for a darker tone than the Charlton HestonCecil B DeMille Moses movie The Ten Commandments, Scott sees the Hebrew leader’s story as a tale of redemption and defiance — but also one in which God’s actions sometimes seem cruel or arbitrary. There is plenty of thematic and emotional territory worth exploring

in Exodus, but the director digs into it only on occasion.

It is testament to Bale’s commanding presence that he almost manages to sell this underwritten character.

Rather than a larger-than-life hero, Moses in Exodus is portrayed as a modest, honourable man who eschewed opulence. But Bale can only project noble blandness onto this character, delivering a few impassioned speeches and grimly wrestling with God’s wisdom.

Bale does not get much help from his co-stars, mostly because they are shackled to dull roles. As Ramses, Edgerton displays little charisma: this egotistical, spoiled king is not dastardly evil or gloriously wretched enough to generate much interest. As for character shading, the film-makers let Edgerton show some affection to his newborn son, which is meant to make Ramses more sympathetic when a plague wipes out the Egyptians’ first-born. But it is delivered without any conviction.

As for the supporting cast, it is filled with big stars in too-small parts. Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul mostly follows beside Moses as the faithful hanger-on Joshua, while Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver give weight to blink-and-you’ll-miss-them roles.

Exodus is in part a warning about the hubris of mere mortals thinking they are gods. Apparently, some blockbuster film-makers think it is acceptable to exclude themselves from such judgments.

Tim Grierson CONTACT 20TH CENTURY FOX

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December 5, 2014 Screen International 35

AWARDS PEOPLE

CROSSING GENERATIONS

A TASTE FOR VICE

Paul Thomas Anderson (right) was present for a ‘tastemaker’ advance screening of Inherent Vice on November 20 at Ham Yard Hotel, London. He told Q&A host Mark Kermode that he loved listening to an audience enjoying the film. “It’s great to hear people laugh – it’s the best feeling in the world to sit and watch a film you made making people laugh. It can make you drunk with excitement.” He encouraged viewers to let the film wash over them rather than study every plot point. “Hopefully, emotionally it makes sense and it’s emotionally plausible.”

Cast members Hugh Bonneville, Nicole Kidman, Samuel Joslin, Madeleine Harris, director Paul King and Jim Broadbent

BIG IN ITALY

Eddie Redmayne attended the 32nd Turin Film Festival in Italy to accept the Maserati Award, recognising his work in The Theory Of Everything as best breakthrough actor. While in Turin, Redmayne and producer Eric Fellner travelled in style in a Maserati Quattroporte.

David Heyman at the Paddington premiere

Rain didn’t dampen the spirits, or the fur, at StudioCanal’s Paddington premiere in London on November 23. At a Q&A at The May Fair Hotel the day before the premiere, cast and crew talked about the unique experience of bringing the marmalade-loving bear to life.

Director Paul King says he knew he had to keep a classic feel tied to Michael Bond’s original stories. “I was nervous about the idea of there being a Paddington reboot, you see headlines like ‘Paddington goes to Hollywood,’ but I said he’s not going to be in a baseball cap, rapping about marmalade.

“He’s not just the klutz who gets into scrapes… he’s a character with a proper story. For British audiences, especially, it reminds you of Dickens’ books of boys being sent away.”

Producer David Heyman said he was happy he had made a film his own young son could enjoy, and that will impress adults as well. “I’m acutely aware of how painful it is to take your child to the cinema to endure a film that’s barely watchable for them… but Paul’s humour crosses generations.”

Wendy Mitchell

Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes was the scene of Second World War mathematician Alan Turing’s most famous accomplishment — cracking the Enigma code. And it provides pivotal filming locations for The Imitation Game as well.

Now fans can see a special exhibition at Bletchley Park about the man and the making of the film — in addition to the usual historic war-time displays at Bletchley. Visitors can walk through the pub area where scenes were shot. Costumes worn by Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley are also on display, as is the prototype of the ‘Christopher’ machine and a replica of the story’s famous crossword published in The Daily Telegraph. The exhibition runs through November 2015.

36 Screen International December 5, 2014

The Imitation Game display includes the film’s pub set (above), costumes (above right) and the ‘Christopher’ prototype (right)

Shaun Armstrong / mubsta.com

AN IMITATION OF LIFE

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