Director Nicole Dorsey on set of Balestra.DAVID ASTORGA/Elevation Pictures
There is accidentally good timing, and then there is accidentally perfect timing.
Just a little more than a week after Canadian fencer Eleanor Harvey won the country’s first Olympic medal in the sport, Canadian filmmaker Nicole Dorsey is releasing her dark fencing epic Balestra. While the Canadian Olympic Committee might not be so eager to endorse Dorsey’s intense drama – its Black Mirror-esque plot focuses on an American fencer named Joanna (British actress Cush Jumbo) who turns to lucid-dream technology to sharpen her game – the film feels like the perfect chaser to a summer of rah-rah patriotic spectacle.
More important than any Olympic connection, though, Balestra marks a thrilling elevation in style and ambition for Dorsey, who here gets a big-budget boost in resources and star power after her low-budget debut feature, the 2019 thriller Black Conflux. In addition to securing Jumbo, best known to audiences for the legal television series The Good Fight, Dorsey has wrangled rising star Manny Jacinto (Star Wars: The Acolyte) and veteran tough-guy actor James Badge Dale (24, Iron Man 3).
Ahead of the film’s release next week, Dorsey spoke with The Globe and Mail about the cinematic jumps and lunges required to get Balestra from the mat to the screen.
Balestra marks a thrilling elevation in style and ambition for Dorsey, writes Barry Hertz.DAVID ASTORGA/Elevation Pictures
I know this film has been in the works for a while, but the eventual release timing couldn’t be better.
I’m going to go with that being a happy coincidence. I’m going to take this as kismet.
When the project was initially announced in 2020, Tessa Thompson and Marwan Kenzari were going to star. As a filmmaker, how challenging an experience is it to wait as schedules get changed, casting swaps out and everything else is out of your control?
Being a filmmaker is already so tumultuous that I’ve come to expect at this point in my career that everything can fall apart at any minute. We tried to make the first iteration of this movie pretty early in the pandemic, which is when we reached our first halt. Schedules completely shifted. But when the project came to light again, I was just thrilled it wasn’t dead. I love those actors and hope to work with them at some point in my career, but the delay breathed life into the story. I was able to start fresh in some ways.
How much of the story shifted? Initially, there was talk about there being two versions made at the same time: a film and a limited series.
Originally, it was more of a traditional feature structure. But then there was an opportunity to do something that was in chapters, a new format. In Canada, it was always going to exist as a feature. But perhaps worldwide it could be presented differently, an unconventional undertaking. But the heart of the story itself has always remained the same.
Regarding that story, have you always had a fascination with fencing?
I would say … ever since I picked up Imran Zaidi’s script [laughs]. I did take a fencing class previously – it’s an interesting sport in itself, the history is fascinating. But I didn’t think about it as a movie till I read his script. The story of Joanna is universal – her desires and needs. And the world of swordplay felt so exciting, how the sport reflects her goals.
Then there’s balancing the hard realities of the sport with the more surreal sci-fi elements …
I worked with my director of photography, Marie Davignon, and sound designer, Paul Lucien Col, both of whom I worked with on Black Conflux, to differentiate the worlds. There is this breathy, smooth dream world, where she can sink into her shadow, and the very real world that is clean and sharp and also a little like a ballet. There is an intricacy to it, with the movement of the camera all informed by the sport.
Was there a temptation to have Joanna play for Team Canada, instead of the U.S.?
The way it was written off the top was to be an American fencer. And I’ve been living stateside for nine years – I’m actually a dual citizen now. I also got the script while I was on the American side, even though Imran is Canadian, too. But it always felt like an American story in so many ways. This sense of the American dream, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to reach success – and that your value as a human counts on that success. That’s an American ideology.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Balestra opens in select theatres Aug. 9.