Irish director Rebecca Daly returns to IndieCork with third feature film

Rebecca Daly’s latest film is one of the highlights of the IndieCork festival, writes Colette Sheridan

The classic ‘stranger come to town’ trope sums up Irish director, Rebecca Daly’s third feature film, Good Favour, which will be screened at Indie Cork. Set in the middle of Europe, it concerns a young man who turns up in a devoutly Christian village.

“The inhabitants of the village are from different European countries and have come together because they are suspicious of the wider world and its temptations and want to live separately in a very godly fashion,” says the Cork-based Dubliner.

This closed community is based on the structure of communities such as the Hutterites in North America and the Mennonites in Latin America. Living in the middle of woodland in a small village, a young man appears there one day with no memory of where he came from. He is welcomed by the community in keeping with its Christian ethos. The young man slowly reveals himself while the community has secrets of its own that are unravelled.

The film, shot in Belgium, is a co-production with actors from Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany. Daly, who is the co-writer (along with Glenn Montgomery) and director of the film, explains that Good Favour was at script stage before they went to a producer.

“On this film, there’s an Irish producer, a Belgian one, a Danish and Dutch one. It is financed by those four countries from film funds that might be regional or national, with tax breaks.”

Daly says she doesn’t know what the overall budget for the film was but in keeping with independent European films, it’s relatively modest. “Like any job, you get paid for the job you do on the film.”

If there is a profit, “it is distributed to various parties, like maybe the actors or heads of departments such as the director, writer, producer.”

Daly’s previous features are The Other Side of Sleep and Mammal, the latter starring Rachel Griffiths and Barry Keoghan. Is Daly ever tempted to make more commercial films?

For me, it’s all about the stories. The story dictates the style of the film. I’m not thinking too much about how commercial something is or isn’t. It’s interesting to see the kind of films that do make a mark. Sometimes, it can be unpredictable. Often, when people try to predict (how a film will be received) they get it wrong.

IndieCork organisers: Back row: Laragh Mooney, Arthur Leahy. Front - Mick Hannigan, Eileen Hogan, Úna Feely, Tony Langlois

A graduate of theatre studies and English literature at Trinity College Dublin, Daly completed an MA in film at the Dublin Institute of Technology. She says she admires the work of such directors as Lynn Ramsay, Michael Haneke and Paolo Sorentino.

The #MeToo movement, calling out abuse and sexual harassment in the movie industry, is not something to which Daly has had recourse.

I haven’t experienced anything abusive. It appears that women have had bad experiences, being abused and mistreated. I think it’s perfectly valid for them to speak up about it. I can understand why for so long, people didn’t speak up about these powerful men.

Daly is currently working on another feature film. While it’s too early to talk about it, she says it’s an American story and will probably be shot in the US.

As part of its efforts to encourage women in film to direct, Indie Cork is introducing an award for Emerging Irish Female Directors.

Festival organiser Mick Hannigan says there is “an issue to be addressed which is why women who have the capacity to take on the major producer role are not taking on the lead creative role”.

Only about 15% of Irish film submissions to IndieCork this year were by Irish female directors.

However, 36% of Irish shorts being screened at the festival are directed by women, an increase on previous years.

Good Favour will be screened on Tuesday, October 9, at the Gate Cinema at 9.15pm, and will go on general release in November

IndieCork highlights (Oct 7-14) 

Smuggling Hendrix, from Cyprus, is the opening film on Sunday at the Gate Cinema. Winner of the Best International Feature Award at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, this droll comedy features a beloved dog who runs across a border, creating mayhem.

Daughter of Mine, from Italy, is the closing film on October 14 at the Gate Cinema. Nominated for the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, it portrays a young girl in Sardinia torn between her birth mother, a chaotic young woman, and the doting mother who has raised her and given her a secure life. The rural landscape of Sardinia plays an important role in this film.

The Reports on Sarah and Saleem, from Palestine, is at the Gate Cinema on October 11. Winner of two major awards this year at Rotterdam Film Festival, this political thriller follows an adulterous couple caught in the quagmire of contemporary Israel. Sarah runs a cafe in West Jerusalem and is married to an Israeli colonel. Saleem is from East Jerusalem and deliveries to bakeries in the West.

The Urban October Programme at the Gate Cinema on October 14 comprises new short Irish documentaries which document Irish lives and ways. They include a film about an elderly woman cheerfully contemplating death to young people describing how they came out as lesbian or gay. There’s a film about the work of Cork’s Penny Dinners, and the story of a man who established an animal sanctuary in West Cork.

The work of experimental Austrian film director, Johann Lurf, will be screened at the Gate Cinema on October 8. Lurf can’t easily be subsumed into any one category. His films examine various modes (both human and technologically-aided) of vision and motion. Lurf will be a guest of the festival and will introduce his new ambitious experimental film, featuring the galaxy of night stars in the sky, as well as some of his short films, four of which are 3D.

www.indiecork.com