A filmmaker with a dream is not an uncommon starting point for many independent projects.
However, for Damage writer, director, and producer Madeleine Blackwell, it was a literal dream that got the ball rolling on her debut feature.
More than a decade ago, the stage and screen actor was meeting with a refugee advocate once a week with the purpose of gathering stories about what was happening in the “nitty gritty interface” between asylum seekers and the Department of Immigration.
Such was her fascination with what was said, she began to feel overwhelmed, only to receive the answer of how to tie it into one story in her sleep.
“One night I had a dream and all that information seemed to distill into just two characters inside a car,” she said.
The unconscious vision would form the basis for Damage, which picks up with an Iraqi non-citizen driving a taxi under someone else’s identity and relying on GPS to navigate a city he doesn’t know.
When he picks up Esther, an old woman who can’t remember where she is going and is angry at being stripped of what is familiar to her, the two embark on a journey where the only common ground is the damage they share and surveillance cameras are the sole markers of their progress.
After writing the script, Blackwell made further strides with her project in 2012 when she met asylum seeker and the subject of Robin de Crespigny’s book The People Smuggler, Ali Al Jenabi, at the Sydney Writers’ Festival.
Having fled his native country of Iraq more than 20 years ago at the height of the Iraq war, he is still confined to a bridging visa within Australia and has become known as the “Oskar Schlinder of Asia.”
“I saw him on stage and I just thought, ‘That’s the guy for my film’,” she said.
While initially reluctant to take on the lead role of Ali Al Saidi, Jenabi was eventually persuaded to travel to Adelaide to do some initial improvisations with the actress cast to play Esther, Blackwell’s mother Imelda Bourke.
According to the writer/director, the key to bringing him on board was making sure he knew the story wasn’t about him personally.
“There was a book about him and everyone was interested in knowing about him,” she said.
“But he did say to me, ‘I like this because it’s not me, I get to be somebody else’, so I think that’s what interested him initially.”
Despite securing her two leads, Blackwell wouldn’t start filming until 2016, working off a budget of $100,000, raised predominantly through a crowdfunding campaign.
The shoot took place over two years and encompassed locations in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide.
Bourke, who was 88 at the time production commenced, and Jenabi, a full-time employee in the building industry working in western Sydney, were joined by a core team consisting of Blackwell, editor Raphael Rivera, and assistant director and script advisor Tom Changarathil for the entire process.
Other contributors include producer Sharon Cleary, co-producer Peter Thurmer, finance and production assistant Oksana Shendrik, camera assistant Musa Zakizada, camera operator Rebecca Duncker, and cinematographers Paul J. Warren and Hugh Freytag. Peter Knight, Mohammad Ameen Marrdan, Jerry Wesley-Smith, and Kate Reid composed the score for the film.
In crafting the film, Blackwell said she was inspired by filmmakers such as Michael Haneke, Claire Denis, and Abbas Kiarostami, who break the fourth wall and ask more of their audiences.
“It was very important to to create space in the edit so that the audience can actually sit with ideas and have moments to reflect, instead of being spoon-fed and driven from one point to the next,” she said.
“I just really want to create that space where we can stay with ourselves as well as watch the film.”
Audiences got their first look at Damage at the 2020 Adelaide Film Festival, where it screened in the Australian Indies strand.
While the final mix and sound design were yet to be completed, the film proved popular, with the festival adding three additional screenings.
However, there would be further challenges on the horizon, including not only COVID but also the passing of Bourke, who succumbed to cancer four weeks after attending the Adelaide screening, and Blackwell’s brother, who assisted with the script.
The filmmaker acknowledged “a really difficult time” had coincided with the final phase of the film but said it was a “really great feeling” to be able to finally share it with the public.
“The film itself has survived all those drawn-out moments where we couldn’t work on it and or when we ran out of money to work on it,” she said.
“We had to do chook raffles and screenings to entice people to come and see it and donate. It was quite a fabulous process, the whole crowdfunding element because we’ve ended up with a big family of people who’ve got a vested interest in seeing it get finished.”
Damage will screen in selected cinemas nationally from this Thursday, November 9 via Antidote Films.