Michael Winterbottom is one of the UK’s more prolific independent filmmakers, with over 30 features to his name across a 35-year career – but his latest, Shoshana, has been rather a slow burn.
The drama, based on real people and events, premiered in Toronto, before playing in French festival of UK and Irish film Dinard, and will have its UK premiere at BFI London Film Festival on October 7.
It is set in 1930s Tel Aviv, as violence erupt in the British Mandate for Palestine, with various Zionist factions grappling for dominance. Tensions are explored through a love story between a left-leaning Jewish journalist and British assistant superintendent in the police force.
It has been in the works for 15 years, with the initial inspiration coming from a trip to the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2008, in which he began reading about the British Mandate period in Palestine and became fascinated by its parallels with the American experience in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s.
The film was in the works under the title Promised Land, with Jim Sturgess attached to star in 2010. So what was the hold up?
“When you try and make your film, to some extent, it’s a matter of luck,” said Winterbottom during an on-stage Q&A with Screen at Dinard. “You really just need one person to say yes. Possibly there is a little bit of nervousness around dealing with this subject matter. We’ve had two or three serious efforts to make it before and we’ve got quite close. We’ve had very good actors attached.
“Perhaps a better way of looking at it is why did it get made now? The last 10 years there has been growing political polarisation, even in countries like Britain with Brexit, you feel like there’s a sense that you’re either my enemy or you’re my friend. That’s what the central strand of the film is about. It’s about the way in which political violence or political extremism can drive people apart, and maybe that seemed more relevant now than it did when we first started.”
Puglia in Italy was used for the 2022 shoot, instead of Tel Aviv. “It’s really pretty impossible to film modern Tel Aviv for Tel Aviv then – Tel Aviv then was new, small, mostly two or three storey [buildings] which is very hard to find in modern Tel Aviv. We travelled around Israel, Jordan, Spain and we ended up in Puglia. The landscape is the same, the sea is the same, and the architecture of the towns was really good for us.”
Shoshana is produced by Melissa Parmenter, Josh Hyams and Luigi Napoleone through Winterbottom’s Revolution Films and Italian outfit Bartleby Films. Cast includes established UK names Harry Melling and Douglas Booth.
Winterbottom found his female lead, Russian actor Irina Starshenbaum, in 2018 Cannes competition film Leto. “She speaks Russian and English, “ said Winterbottom. “She is Jewish, but she didn’t speak Hebrew. We cast quite a long time before the film was made, and she had to learn it. One thing to remember is Hebrew was a new language then. Most people living in Tel Aviv who arrived were first generation immigrants coming from Poland or Russia. Hebrew was almost reinvented at the beginning of the 20th century.”
It isn’t the first time that Winterbottom has visited the Israel-Palestine region in his work. He co-directed Gaza documentary Eleven Days In May with Mohammed Sawwaf and produced through Revolution Films alongside Sawwaf’s Alef Multimedia, which was distributed exclusively in Picturehouse cinemas in the UK.
Deals are yet to be fully sealed on Shoshana for the UK, US and France. It will be released in Israel by Playhouse and Vision Distribution in Italy in November. Vision Distribution also represents world sales.
Film vs TV
Winterbottom’s TV credits include Covid-19 drama This England and The Trip. His next project is a drama series, Fall Of The God Of Cars, about former Nissan and Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn.
Ghosn was arrested in Japan, and one year later orchestrated his own escape to Beirut, hidden in a music case on a private jet. Cast attached are Drive My Car star Hidetoshi Nishijima and Ali & Ava actor Adeel Akhtar, along with previously announced Tony Shalhoub in the lead role.
Winterbottom’s Revolution Films is collaborating with Fremantle, Passenger and Anonymous Content on the series. Winterbottom confirmed scripts have been written, but, “we’re just waiting for the money.”
Although his next project is a series, Winterbottom admitted, “Overall, the shape of a film is something I prefer. You can tell it in one go and then it’s finished.”
He laments the discrepancy between funding support for TV and film projects in the UK. “We made a film called The Road To Guantanamo, which won the Silver Bear at Berlin [in 2006]. When we went to Channel 4, they said you can have £300,000 if you make it as a film. If you make it for TV, we’ll give you £1.5m. This is what happens on all TV drama. The average money they give you for the TV rights for a 50 minute episode of a drama is £750,000. Two episodes, 100 minutes, if you do it as a drama, that’s £1.5m. So they are paying one fifth the money for a film that they would pay for a TV drama. It’s crazy.”
Winterbottom also called out the lack of support available for UK filmmakers beyond their debut. “There are a lot of processes, a lot of projects, a lot of schemes to encourage first-time filmmakers,” he said. “That is great, but there’s almost no scheme to encourage a fourth-time filmmaker, or a fifth-time filmmaker. A lot of the filmmakers I have talked to said it was easier when they were beginning. Gradually, the space seems to narrow, and that’s why they start looking somewhere else.”
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