‘We’re interested in outsiders, it’s a basic human preoccupation’

As Rebecca Daly's film Good Favour opens, a pale, injured young man emerges from the woods somewhere in Mittle-Europe. He finds refuge with an isolated Christian community. In common with the inhabitants of M Night Shyalaman's The Village, members of the sect are forbidden from venturing too far into the forest, but there are far greater mysteries here. The young man, who can only tell his hosts that his name is Tom, has a strange effect on the local children, he has wounds that never heal, and he may have supernatural powers.

Odd as it sounds, this enigmatic feature was inspired by a news story happened upon by Glenn Montgomery, Daly’s regular screenwriting partner.

I think you can read the film as a supernatural story or you can read it as entirely human story

“It was about a young guy in Berlin who said he had no idea who he was or where he came from,” explains Daly. “He claimed to have been in a car crash with his parents that had killed both of them. But before that he didn’t remember anything. He went through social services and psychological evaluations for over a year until he got to an age when the authorities felt they could release his photo on Interpol. Quite quickly, his aunt from Amsterdam got in touch. He had run away from home as he had got himself in a situation that he wanted to get away from.

“We were really only interested in the set-up of that story. The ending was a little bit mundane! So what would happen if a young guy walked into the woods and came into a community and said he had no recollection of where he came from? What would he become to them, and what would they become for him?

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“We’re very interested in outsiders. It’s something we’ve explored in all our films. It’s such a basic human preoccupation. The idea of belonging. I think it’s an even more important idea now with all the discourse around migrants and Trump and his wall and the refugee crisis. So we were hoping to tap into that.”

The third feature by the Cork-based film-maker makes intriguing use of deer, the surrounding woodlands, and the suggestion of magic. On the international festival circuit, Daly has encountered as many readings of the enigmatic Good Favour as there are viewers.

“What’s most interesting is the possibilities,” she says. “I think you can read the film as a supernatural story or you can read it as entirely human story and I think that’s up to the audience to decide. From my experience of travelling with the film, the interpretation tends to rooted in the viewer’s own belief systems and their own experiences of religion or faith.”

The film is meticulously crafted. During pre-production each of the actors were supplied with a “bible” outlining the community’s beliefs and practises. Both cast and crew wandered around the village as it was being constructed for the film.

“We were quite isolated from any major town so we became a bit of a community ourselves,” says Daly. “It was actually great fun. We had summer barbeques. I think when your making a film like this – and it’s certainly not a comedy, as you know – it really helps to have lightness on the set. I don’t think living in the atmosphere of the film all day is particularly useful.”

Challenging

A constellation of accents add to the film's many textures. A co-production between Ireland, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands, Good Favour boasts an international cast all working from Daly and Montgomery's English language script. Directing actors in a second language was probably harder for them that it was for her, she the film-maker.

“Most of our actors had very good English except for the children. The two lead children spoke English well but the rest of the children couldn’t speak a word. They had to learn the English language song in the film, which they did wonderfully and phonetically. It was a bit challenging at times. I had to brush up on my Leaving Cert level French. The actor Lars Brygmann who plays Mikkel, the leader of the community, said he felt that acting in English was like being a violinist missing one of his strings. I don’t feel that comes across in his performance but it was something he was aware of.”

I had a lightning bolt moment. 'Ah: this is what I want to do'

By now, Daly is accustomed to working alongside international cast and crew. Her first feature film, The Other Side Of Sleep, was selected for the Cannes Cinéfondation Residency and was co-produced between Ireland, Hungary, and the Netherlands. Mammal, her Dublin-based sophomore feature starring Barry Keoghnan, was developed in the first Berlin Film Festival residency and was partially shot in Luxembourg.

“All of my films have been made through the co-production model and they’ve all been very happy experiences for me,” says Daly. “Usually it’s three countries involved, this time it was four. This film is different because its not set in Ireland but when I’ve made films that are set in Ireland, it’s always very interesting working with crew members that aren’t Irish. They bring their own cultural expectations to the story. Their read brings something else.”

Speaking to The Irish Times in 2016, Daly said she was excited by the objectives the Irish Film Board had laid out as a means of addressing gender imbalance in the industry. Those guidelines have coalesced into the newly-renamed Screen Ireland's POV, a production and development programme for female writers and directors.

In 2011, Daly became the first Irish female director to have a film selected for the Director’s Fortnight programme at Cannes, where she won the Camera d’Or for best first feature. Not bad going for someone who stumbled into film by accident.  “I studied drama and English at Trinity and then I signed up for a masters in film on kind of of a whim, to be honest. I wasn’t sure what to do after Trinity but my friend was signing up, so I did too. The way the course was structured was if you had a script that was picked for production, then you could direct it if you wanted to. Luckily two of my scripts were picked. So I got to direct there and then I had a lightning bolt moment. ‘Ah: this is what I want to do’.

“I think it’s great they are doing something to address the problem,” says Daly. “The numbers were clearly showing that we weren’t at all on an equal footing. In recent years, I’ve certainly noticed a shift. I’m definitely meeting more female directors definitely. But the numbers are still lacking. POV is good as an interim measure, but obviously we want to get to a place where it’s not needed.”

Good Favour is released on November 2nd