After scoring a critical hit with Osama at Cannes, film producer Julie le Brocquy is tackling Joseph Conrad, writes Michael Dwyer
At last month's lacklustre Cannes Film Festival, one of the few movies to ignite enthusiasm in critics and film distributors was the low-budget Osama, a powerful, uncompromising Afghan drama directed by Siddiq Barmak, who received a citation in the festival's Camera d'Or award for first-time directors. His film was also voted the best of the festival by the Cannes Youth Jury, and received the AFCAE Award from the Arthouse Cinema-Owners of France.
Shot in Kabul late last year, Osama is the first feature film to be made in Afghanistan in the post-Taliban era. Charged by some extraordinary imagery and made with commendable clarity and justified anger, it presents an appalling picture of life under the Taliban regime. Featuring an entirely non-professional cast, the film sets its focus on a 13-year-old girl who risks posing as a boy named Osama to earn some money for her widowed mother, who is not allowed to work - or even to leave her house without a male family companion.
The film deservedly received rave reviews at Cannes, and sparked a bidding frenzy among international distributors, with United Artists winning the US rights and committing to a significant financial investment in an Academy Awards campaign for the film.
Osama already ranks as a front-runner for next year's Oscar for best foreign-language film.
Writer-director Barmak produced the film with an Irish production company, le Brocquy Fraser, operated by Dublin-based producer Julie le Brocquy and British producer Julia Fraser and Malaysian filmmaker U-Wei Bin Haji Saari, both of whom are based in Singapore.
Osama was initially deemed ineligible for the Camera d'Or at Cannes on the grounds that Barmak did not qualify as a first-time director because he had already made a feature-length documentary - even though that film was burnt by the Taliban and was never seen anywhere.
"We finally came to an agreement whereby we wrote a declaration stating that his documentary had been destroyed, and they accepted this," explains Julie le Brocquy. "However, when it came to deciding on who would get the award, we found that they just could not overcome the fact that he already had made the documentary. They felt it disqualified him from the main prize, even though the jury was unanimous that he should get it, and that's why they gave him a special mention when the awards were presented."
Born and bred in Dublin, Julie le Brocquy comes from a family that resembles the Cannes Film Festival in the way it spans extremes of art and commerce.
Her late father, Noel, was the chairman of Burma Oil, while her uncle and aunt are the distinguished artists, Louis le Brocquy and his wife, Anne Madden.
"When I was a kid, I had the choice between doing something academic or getting involved in business," says Julie le Brocquy. "Louis had the vocation for art, which I hadn't. I'm very close to Louis and Anne. I've seen them suffer emotionally and financially for their art over the years. They paint because they feel they have to paint, and it's great they're not working in a world where artists like Van Gogh died penniless.
"I decided I would do my creative thing when I had the bread and butter. So, 20 years ago, I left for London and worked as a banker. I worked for Salomon Brothers as a trader in the 1980s and 1990s. I was working with one of the most prestigious firms at the time, but because I am a woman, I only got the jobs nobody else wanted. There were some other female traders during my time there, but they were all gone after a few years.
"I had the good fortune that, when I first started trading, I worked for years in some very bad markets, which is the best university of all. It became second nature for me to see things that were presented or planned properly."
After spending more than a decade in London and later some time in Tokyo, le Brocquy moved to Singapore where she met Julia Fraser. "Julia has a film degree and she has some very good instincts and ideas. She was living in Australia at the time, and she came up to Singapore, where I was. We set up Clockwork Productions, this tiny little company making corporate videos, and it was a learning curve for how business is done in Asia. But our intention was always to produce feature films."
They met U-Wei Bin Haji Saari, one of Malaysia's leading film directors, and the three of them formed Le Brocquy Fraser. "We did it to give an opportunity to honest directors to tell honest stories about the regions," le Brocquy says. "People are rightly concerned about how much money Hollywood is spending on making films - the average is now $58 million per film, and some of the bigger films cost a lot more - whereas it really is possible to make a reasonably good quality movie in the western world for $5 million and under. In Asia it can be done for much less.
"There are so many people out there with cash who, if they were presented with a project that made economic sense, would consider investing in making more films like Osama. So, Julia and I exchanged as much information as was possible, and having U-Wei on board the company helps incredibly because he has so much experience and is held in such respect."
She and her partners in le Brocquy Fraser are actively involved in developing their "dream film", an adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novel Almayer's Folly, which is set in late 19th century Borneo. "That is up in the $5 million bracket," she says. "We have U-Wei's script at the final draft stage and Harvey Kietel has agreed to take the leading role, as Almayer. We think this is a movie that has to be made and that will break through when it is made. It's 70 per cent in English.
"There have been so many films made from Conrad's books, but all directed by Westerners, so the camera is always pointed at the white man, the trader or whatever, and the locals are exoticised to the point of being degraded.
"U-Wei has written this adaptation that absolutely transforms the message of Conrad. He's allowing the local people to have strong, dominant personalities, while the Almayer character is a weak man, an opium user."
To help get that movie made, U-Wei has made another film on a very low budget - Sax Dan Talipon, a thriller involving a jazz musician in Kuala Lumpur. "We thought it would go directly to TV in the region," le Brocquy says, "but it's turned out to be much better than that, so we're going to blow it up to film and put it out on the festival circuit."
Her company became involved with Siddiq Barmak on Osama when, as she puts it, it was just a piece of paper. "We liked the ideas and we underwrote the project with a view to getting further finance down the road," she says.
"Siddiq is one of those passionate directors who works very fast, and he had it all shot in six weeks. We wanted to be there for at least some of the shooting, but it takes four weeks to get a visa to Afghanistan and filming was completed before we could get there. The editing was done in Tehran and the Iranians were incredibly co-operative. The film cost around €500,000, but that does not take into account all the services provided free."
Iran's Ministry of Culture donated materials, filming equipment and laboratory services to the film, and the Tehran-based Makhmalbaf Film House - run by the pre-eminent Iranian director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf - provided editing facilities and financial support.
Makhmalbaf, who directed the riveting recent Afghan drama, Kandahar, has implemented more than 50 educational and hygiene projects in Afghanistan in the past year and has been hugely supportive in helping to revive the country's film industry, which, due to economic and cultural difficulties, has produced less than 40 shorts and feature films in the first century of cinema.
"These countries are in need of a voice," le Brocquy says. "That is a key element in the philosophy of our company." She isunderstandably pleased Osama was so warmly received at Cannes, and that it has been sold for distribution around the world, ensuring that its director, Siddiq Barmak, will benefit financially from its returns.
To handle the international sales on the film, she enlisted the services of Swipe Films, the London company run by Frank Mannion, a young film producer from Carlow, who was inundated with offers after the world première of the film at Cannes, where it received a sustained standing ovation.
"When we went to Cannes," she says, "we had no intention of marketing the film to the Americans. We planned to re-market it for the US and do that later. We were told by veterans of long standing that Americans would have no interest in this film."
Such was the festival buzz building around the movie that Mannion had to arrange private screenings at Cannes for Miramax chairman Harvey Weinstein and for other leading US distributors before United Artists president Bingham Ray secured the US rights.
To be eligible for the best foreign- language film Oscar, Osama has to be nominated by the Afghan government as the national entry. Julie le Brocquy shrugs at this. "Siddiq is the deputy minister for culture there," she says. "In fact, before the Taliban took over the country, another Afghan film was entered for the Oscars and Siddiq himself signed the official form."
This time last month, the film was virtually unknown, and she is still coming to terms with the remarkable rollercoaster journey that started in Cannes two weeks later. "I can't even believe it," she says, "that at this stage we're having a conversation about its chances in the Oscars."