Amar Wala directs on the set of Shook, his first feature film.Roya DelSol/Supplied
A few years ago while visiting some family in India, I was introduced to a family friend. Apparently they loved movies, and were eager to meet me. They asked what kind of films I was making back in Canada. “Mostly documentaries,” I replied. Their expression changed.
“Oh … so, not real movies.”
While the economic case for feature films gets more bleak every year, they are still seen as the ultimate marker of cultural achievement for a filmmaker. They are “real movies.”
I recently completed Shook, my first scripted feature film. We received just about all the support a Canadian filmmaker can hope for in our rich and flawed system. My producing partner Karen Harnisch and I were funded by Telefilm Canada, Ontario Creates and the Canada Media Fund. We have a dream distributor in Elevation Pictures, and even secured a tiny bit of private equity. Despite many challenges, the production itself was the highlight of my career. We fostered a sense of warmth and community on set that is all too rare. Every once in a while someone on the crew would say to me, “this isn’t normal.”
On paper it doesn’t get much better than this, but getting to this point felt like a 10-round slugfest in which we had to withstand several major body blows to make the final bell. Our first blow came early, when we were rejected for Telefilm funding the first time we applied. Telefilm is the funder for feature films in Canada. Without its investment, it’s almost impossible to make a film with adequate resources. We would only get one more shot at Telefilm the following year, or the film was likely dead. Luckily we did receive Telefilm support on our second try, but there was a catch.
Once you get Telefilm (about one-third of our funding), you must close 100 per cent of your financing within their fiscal year or you can lose the money. This puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the filmmakers. In the end, we were able to close financing at a slightly lower budget level than we felt would be optimal, with the hopes of raising more money down the road. I’m aware of how privileged we were to shoot a film with this support in place, but the financial precarity felt like a knife dangling above our heads.
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Another major blow came just a few weeks before we began production. A wonderful local actor cast in our lead role officially bowed out. Recasting on the fly is a common issue in indie films, but it is a particularly daunting challenge when casting a South Asian leading role. The rules tied to our funding meant we had to cast a Canadian – which is fair, but frankly, Canada has done a poor job of cultivating and developing BIPOC screen talent over the years. The list of South Asian actors of that age group who we felt could pull off a true leading role was short. Just a couple of weeks before official prep, the incredible Saamer Usmani – from Netflix’s Inventing Anna and 3 Body Problem – signed on. I can’t wait for people to see his performance.
Shook is a personal film, set equally in Scarborough and downtown Toronto. Naturally, I wanted to shoot all the scenes in those neighbourhoods, but the filming infrastructure of this city is almost entirely geared to support American productions shooting here, and they don’t shoot much in Scarborough. This meant that when finding locations, our crew was often starting from scratch, building new relationships with businesses and residential management companies. Simple locations, such as a Scarborough apartment, proved nearly impossible to find. After weeks of our team trying to find a suitable apartment, I turned to my secret weapon: my mom. She made a few calls, and we found our spot. Once again, I heard “this isn’t normal.”
In the end, we did receive the final piece of funding we were relying on, thanks to the Canadian Media Fund’s Program for Racialized Communities, which was a relief, but it wasn’t without its own complications. These different bits of funding are all needed but aren’t always designed to fit together, causing a bureaucratic nightmare that pulls you away from the creative task at hand. It took a full team giving it everything they’ve got to find our way through on paper. It’s tempting, now that the film is complete, to say “it all worked out in the end,” but the truth is, any one of these obstacles could have derailed the film. Most of the process feels like you’re on a razor’s edge. That part, it sadly seems, is normal.
We are blessed in Canada to have these piles of money to make movies and TV but it feels like, for that privilege, filmmakers are expected to take on great personal and professional risk. I can’t help but wonder how much better our films would get, and how much healthier our filmmakers would be, if these systems found ways to work together more easily. Now, with the implementation of Bill C-11 and the potential new revenues it hopes to generate for the screen industry, it is imperative that our leaders ensure the future of feature films in this country. They are still the crown jewel for both the audience and artist alike. We must ensure now more than ever that we can continue to make “real movies.”
I’m not sure what the future holds for Shook. A festival run, a theatrical release, perhaps even international distribution: I’ll be grateful for all of it. The greatest thing Shook has done for me is remind me how much I love filmmaking, how much the craft itself excites me. I want nothing more than for other filmmakers to feel this feeling.
“This isn’t normal.” Maybe it could be.
Special to The Globe and Mail