TIFF ‘09 | Kate Ogborn: “I hope that the film touches people”

In 2006 I was working at Revolution Films developing a slate of projects for Channel 4 Television with the goal of making ambitious films for television in the UK that would also have a theatrical life, as Revolution had done brilliantly with “Road to Guantanamo.” Sam and I started talking about the film again at the end of 2006. I was having lunch with Liza Marshall, Head of Drama at Channel 4, to discuss possible films for them. She was looking for ideas for comedies, which “The Unloved” clearly wasn’t. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that Sam’s story was really powerful and beautiful, so I pitched the idea of Sam directing a film about a young girl in care in Nottingham. And she loved it. From then on the process to production was pretty fast. Tony Grisoni, who I was working with at Revolution Films on the adaptation of David Peace’s “Red Riding” novels, came on board to write the screenplay and worked closely with Sam during the development.

We were greenlit in May 2008 with financing from Channel 4, EM Media and Revolution Films and started principal photography that November in Nottingham. On an initial recce to Nottingham, in February 2007, we visited the television workshop that Sam had been part of when she was a teenager. It was there that we first saw Molly Windsor, who would become Lucy, the film’s lead. Sam immediately connected with her and thought there was something really interesting about her. When we came back to the film a year later, the casting director went back and did a big search through all the schools and drama groups in Nottingham, and Molly came back through that route, but Sam always had Molly in the back of her mind as having a stillness about her and an immediately empathetic quality.

Given the subject matter of the film it was really important to us that we looked after the children we were working with. We were very careful to explain to the parents, particularly to Molly’s mother, what was going to be involved. Sam was also extremely good at ensuring that Molly was made to feel very safe and very well looked after during the shoot. Sam was very clear right from the beginning that she didn’t want to make a film about abuse during which we in any way exploited the children we were working with.

I am hugely proud of the film, Sam and the whole team who have worked so hard on the film. For me, it’s one of the truest accounts of the way a child experiences the world that I’ve seen. I really admire Sam’s courage and her faith in her own instincts. It was great to be part of a film which has something so rare, which is a profound spiritual sensibility.

Your Influences…

This is just an incomplete list of some of the things I love: “Singing in the Rain,” “A Matter of Life and Death,” “Taxi Driver,” soul music, swimming, the Scottish Highlands, Mexico, my daughter Cora.

The Future…

It is really exciting for us to be screening the film in Toronto as it is the first opportunity to show the film to an international audience and to an incredibly cine-literate and passionate audience. I hope that the film touches people and gives them an insight into what it feels like to be a child in care. And of course I hope that it sells.