Sue Brooks, 'Looking For Grace'

In Sue Brooks’ (Japanese Story) Venice competition drama Looking For Grace an exasperated mother and father (Radha Mitchell and Richard Roxburgh) enlist the help of a close-to-retiring detective (Terry Norris) to track down their impetuous 16-year-old daughter Grace (Odessa Young) who has run away from home.

Screen spoke to Brooks – one of only two women directors in competition (the other being musician Laurie Anderson) – about realising a dream, exciting newcomer Odessa Young (the seventeen year-old also stars in Venice Days drama The Daughter) and the on-going challenges faced by women directors.

Screen: Congratulations on your film’s entry into Venice… From some previous interviews you’ve given it sounded like you were a little surprised by the call…

Brooks: [Laughs] Well, when you come from Australia Venice is something of a dream. It’s up there with Cannes and Sundance. Getting into competition is even more special.

Screen: How did you come to this story?

Brooks: The story has been with me a for a long time. I first read an article about the story on a plane many years ago.

Screen: Was it a difficult one to get together?

Brooks: Shocking, yes [laughs]. It was very hard to finance. We would get to the front of the queue and they would say ‘yes we really like it but not this time’. Thankfully we had Fortissimo and Palace Films on board early as distributors. Getting the Australian state finance was a longer journey.

Screen: Who were your main backers in the end?

Brooks: The producers and Screen West.

Screen: When did you start on it?

Brooks: We were in development from around 2010 and shot late last year.

Screen: What did you find the biggest challenge?

Brooks: Trying to do it in the timeframe. It was a question of rolling up our sleeves and making it very fast.

Screen: People are excited about Odessa Young…

Brooks: She did a self-test audition and I have to admit I almost missed her. She did a good audition but I couldn’t quite grasp who she was. Somebody said you should look again so I met her in Sydney and she and the actress who plays her friend in the film were so good. They understood the nuances of the roles.

She made our film and Simon’s film [The Daughter] concurrently. She’s great - much more mature than her years. I want to treat her like a teenager but she has gone way past me!

She had done shorts before but these are her first two features. She’s not going to let the grass grow under her feet. She’s got everything you hope for in an actor and she could go very far.

Screen: You are one of only two women directors in the main competition and the only woman director in competition known for making films. The number of women directors getting into the main competitions at the biggest festivals remains very low. Why is this the case in your opinion?

Brooks: I think it starts way before then. It all starts with the financing. It’s still very difficult for women to get their films financed. We love and respect men’s work but statistically we don’t stand up well. On Looking For Grace, we’d hit the finance deadlines and we’d be shortlisted each time but we couldn’t get over the line.

I don’t think you don’t get over the line because you’re a woman per se but because those selecting have a bias towards other sorts of films. They might not see it working at script stage and you have different ideas because they may be used to other sorts of films.

When you get knocked back for funding you think it’s because they don’t like your film, not because you’re a woman. But after a while you look at the stats and think there isn’t something quite working here. We’re so many years after the birth of the feminist movement and we still haven’t advanced to where we should have.

Screen: Did you want to make films in the six years between now and your last film Subdivision?

Brooks: We’ve had many films that we’ve lined up but couldn’t get the money [laughs]. We’d make a film a year if we could find the money.

Screen: What’s next?

Brooks: We have a handful of ideas we’re working on. A comedy romp set in the theatre is one of our most advanced ones at the moment. Alison [regular producer Alison Tilson] is working on one for Radha [Mitchell].