Mary McGuckian is an Irish writer, director, and producer known for her collaborative approach to working with actors. She has worked on 12 films, including “The Price of Desire,” “The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” and “Man on the Train.” Her films have been presented at festivals worldwide, including Tribeca, Sundance, Venice, and London. McGuckian won the Best Feature Film award at the 2007 San Diego Film Festival for “Intervention,” the Best Narrative Feature award at the 2011 Ojai Film Festival for “The Making of Plus One,” and the jury award for Best Foreign Film at the 2000 Temecula Valley International Film Festival for “Best.” In 2009, she was the recipient of the Annual Achievement Award from the Women’s International Film and Television Awards in Los Angeles.
“A Girl from Mogadishu” will premiere at the 2019 Edinburgh Film Festival on June 28.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
MM: There’s a “keeper” of a line from the script that’s key: “Silence may be the rust on the razor with which they threatened to cut my throat, but it was not my tongue they cut.” I can’t claim credit for the entirety of the line — it’s an intentional homage to Maya Angelou in a script written before Tarana Burke’s #MeToo movement took off in the film world — but the power of testimony is the fundamental feminist tenet to which the film subscribes.
“A Girl from Mogadishu” is the story of how Ifrah Ahmed came to understand, develop, and employ the most potent of campaign tools — her own true story — and use it to empowering and extraordinary effect. Not only [was it a] healing tool for her own trauma, but in becoming the “voice not the victim,” she contributed to the global campaign to end Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in a way that medical descriptions and statistical reports could never do.
Presenting her testimony to the European Commission on the occasion of the ratification of the United Nations International Day for Zero Tolerance of FGM, Ifrah brings us on her journey. From war-torn Somalia as an FGM survivor, she is trafficked to Europe and re-traumatized when her condition is discovered during a routine asylum seeker’s medical examination. Channeling the experience into a force for good, she emerges as one of the world’s most renowned activists on the global campaign to eliminate the practice.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
MM: My “stress” test for taking on a topic for a movie comes in the form of three key questions: 1) Do I feel sufficiently passionate about the topic to see the project up and over the many mountainous obstacles that experience reminds me will be encountered? 2) Is there an underlying thesis sufficiently universal to warrant cinematic treatment so that the story will travel and appeal to the widest possible audience? 3) Is there a compelling character narrative that subscribes to the Thornton Wilder thesis that drama is most effective when character-driven?
As I met Ifrah before I’d delved into her story, the answers came in reverse. As a character, Ifrah herself is one of the most compellingly charismatic and awe-inspiring women it has been my privilege to know. This is clear to everyone who meets her from the get-go. Her drive, passion, and commitment to the global campaign to end FGM is second to none. She is multi-skilled and multi-talented and has phenomenal natural feminist credentials underpinned by the human rights empathy ingrained in her DNA.
It is clear that she will not stop campaigning until she has succeeded in her mission. She is also one of the kindest, funniest, cleverest, most beautiful young women you will ever meet, with a winning way and a killer smile. There was no doubt that writing, let alone playing Ifrah, was going to be a joy as well as a challenge. Aja Naomi King rose to it with dedication, hard work, talent, and aplomb, and blew us all away from the moment she committed to prepare for the role.
But first I had to figure out whether the story was one to which I could give authentic voice and whether there was a way to tell Ifrah’s story that would be much more than the sum of its parts — more than a simple documentation of events. Yes, I’m a woman. Yes, I am Irish, like Ifrah. But I have not undergone FGM, and as a female filmmaker from an arguably privileged white culture, participation in the project would require Ifrah’s voice just as much as — if not more than — mine. Thus, [that’s] how the structure for the story evolved. That of bearing witness, using Ifrah’s testimony in the form of the speech she has given so many times over her years of campaigning, to most impactful effect at the European Commission. And out of that decision emerged the script’s underlying thesis: the power of testimony.
And it is that testimony, filmed over two days resulting in tens of hours of footage, that was the clincher. Not even the scale of the statistics after months of research revealing the trauma and health effects endured by the hundreds of millions of women who have undergone FGM, nor the tens of millions of young girls who remain at risk, surpass the impact of one young woman’s personal account of the experience of undergoing female genital mutilation.
The courage and openness of Ifrah’s account is the most devastating testament to the inhumanity of this age-old patriarchal practice passed down from pharaonic times. It was not possible for me to do anything other than take on the project.
W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?
MM: My hope is that as people leave the theater inspired by Ifrah’s achievements and resilience and that they think about how they can contribute to the global campaign to end this practice. [I want them to] engage in conversation, do some research, spread the word and thus contribute to raising the profile of the issue sufficiently to require the international NGO community to prioritize the elimination of FGM.
But most of all, I’m interested in how people feel at the end of a film. I very much hope [that they are] inspired and empowered by this extraordinary young woman.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
MM: It was a challenge, though clearly not impossible, to raise the money to make a film about an Irish-Somalian FGM activist. It’s not a super easy sell as an elevator pitch in the first place. And inevitably every challenge thereafter was a function of being under-budgeted in terms of the ambitions of the script and the project as a whole.
That said, the recent commitment of organizations such as Screen Ireland to prioritizing female-led projects creates a cornerstone for funding films that would have never previously had a chance at production. The tough part for films for, by, and about women is raising industry investment based on the commercial evaluation of the project. Our industry has sadly yet to recognize the inherent value and exploitation potential of films for, by, and about women on an equal footing with what many sales agents use as a benchmark: young male genre fare.
So inevitably, projects such as this rely on non-industry funding sources, donations, and/or individual investors prepared to take a punt given the importance of the subject matter. That’s hard money to raise and often more feasible in the context of a worthy cause or prestigious art piece than as a viable investment with a tangible return.
Perversely, it could be argued that as a result, tougher topic projects have more of a chance of making it into production than more commercial female-led proposals, and thus we’re reinforcing the status quo when it comes to distribution given the perception of films for, by, and about women as inherently lacking commercial potential.
It may be that there will be a lot more tough topic/sensitive subject matter female-led projects in the immediate wake of #MeToo, as there are so many important voices, ignored for so long, crying out to be heard. Lack of commercial investment sources communicant with the ambitions of female led film projects for, by, and about women [is what] I believe to be the 100 percent universal experience of female filmmakers, and it remains our biggest challenge.
The production challenges that emerge as a result of insufficient funding are myriad and require creative responses and innovative solutions, for sure. There can be benefits to that kind of constraint. But not always. The maxim of the productivity triangle — where it is only possible to be two of the following: cheap, fast, or good — is absolutely the case in my experience. On “A Girl from Mogadishu,” we made up for lack of funding by taking as much time as we could to prep and post in the pursuit of excellence. We sure didn’t have the money to run at it.
And given the subject matter, we had some incredible support. A number of event shoots, for example, were created to encourage volunteers to appear as extras. The response of the FGM/C activist community in Europe, the Somali diaspora internationally, and the immigrant community in Ireland was phenomenal. Hundreds of people gave their time, talent, and energy in numbers and on a level I’ve never known on a film shoot in support of Ifrah, her foundation, and the issue. That spirit was inspiring and made for a magical atmosphere on set. But it is difficult not to be able to remunerate people properly for their time and commitment and [it’s also] fundamentally unfair.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
MM: I’m a great believer in holistic filmmaking. Producing creatively, distinct from “creative producing,” involves creating a project which develops all the elements’ — script, cast, crew, locations, studio, and post production — needs simultaneously with an eye to “added value.”
On “A Girl from Mogadishu,” it made complete sense for Ifrah’s story, which travels from Somalia to Ireland through Europe and back to the European Commission, to be produced as an Irish-Belgian co-production with a mixed nationality crew, shooting partly on location in Morocco. The script’s needs and director’s vision were balanced to match the best possible outcome of that co-production and service production structure.
Authenticity is so much cheaper to achieve on real locations, and good casting is key. We spent a lot of time in prep getting granular with tax-credits vis a vis minute 4th line budget detail in conjunction with incredibly detailed locations and schedule feasibility, crew nationality, travel and accommodation requirements, and casting, all with a view to ensuring the best possible combination of elements that would serve the script and maintain the director’s vision on an extremely tight budget. This was very tough on the crew, but they rarely complained, and for this I am deeply grateful. Everyone wants to do their best work.
As a director who produces, it’s much easier to be flexible about the filmmaking process from a budget-conscious perspective without compromising on vision if you really understand the granular detail of your budget and financing arrangements. And as a writer who directs, I’m super conscious of making every shot in every scene in the script count.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
MM: Truthfully, I fell into it. I’m a writer fundamentally. Except now I write with pictures in the edit as well as with words. My first love was poetry, then plays, and eventually when I figured out that it was impossible to earn a living writing for poetry reviews and theater, I studied acting as a day — or rather night — job. Acting is almost as precarious a profession, and when I started, roles for women over 25 with any agency were few and far between, so I supplemented my income writing screenplays and treatments for screen.
Eventually, a script I had written which was almost fully financed was gifted back to me, and I decided to take some time out to see if I could produce it. The director attached made the most generous gift just before it went into production and convinced me to direct it myself. I suppose fundamentally I have always believed in what Yeats called “the consent of the imagination.” The power of the dramatic form to move and touch people, and that’s the buzz.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
MM: Best advice: Don’t forget to ask for the check! Thankfully I learned this quite early on, but not before I’d wasted a year trying to fund a film without every mentioning money. When I had just started trying to produce projects myself, I found I was managing quite well to arrange repeated, repetitive meetings with producers and financiers. They seemed to be delighted to take meetings, listen to my presentation about how the project was going, take an update on the funding package, discuss the script and casting developments, and track all manner of details responding with generally effusive complements. Yet the movie never seemed to quite get off the ground.
I asked a more experienced producer to sit in on one of these meetings to figure out what it was I was doing wrong. After sitting in on yet another hour-long meeting with a producer financier in London, which ended extremely positively but again inconclusively, the more experienced producer friend pointed out my mistake: In my enthusiasm for all the creative and practical aspects of the project, I’d forgotten to mention the money!
Personal advice regarding #MeToo: Quite early on I did find that many of these inconclusive meetings with producer/financiers were being held over lunch, drinks, or dinner even. And perhaps things have improved in the wake of #MeToo, but at a certain stage, I had to recognize that often what I understood to be a business meeting arrangement with a prospective producer or financier took on the complexion of a date in the behavior and demeanor of the other party. Finally, I made a hard and fast rule: Only take meetings during conventional business hours in office locations. This of course meant that I was excluded from a whole world of “boys club networking” venues, events, and opportunities for about 20 years. But it did mean that I managed to deflect the Harvey Weinstein experience — almost.
Worst advice: All directors hear these three perceived “wisdoms” regularly. I call them the three horsemen of the edit-suite:
“This film needs 20 minutes out of it!” Every film I’ve ever made I’ve been advised would benefit from [cutting] ‘20 minutes out of it,’ according to the note-giver. Sometimes it’s 10 minutes, but usually it’s 20 minutes. Of course, at the point at which you’re presenting an assembly or rough cut for initial comments, you are probably mid-picture cut, and it is intentionally over-long as you process through the material pass by pass.
The worst thing you can do is succumb to the pressure and take a pass at an assembly with the primary objective of cutting lumps out of your movie in an effort to demonstrate to the inexperienced producer or financier, who gives either general or prescriptive notes about pace and length, that you are cooperating. Allow the material to dictate its pace, not the note-giver.
“You’re too close to the material!” There is no such thing as being too close to the material. It is simply not possible to do the best by your movie without an intimate knowledge of the script and resulting rushes. And both should be revisited regularly during the picture cut process. You were there when they were shot. You know the material better than anyone. You know how it was intended to be assembled down to the last frame. Every nuance of every performance in every take, every slight shift of the camera, the energy and pace of every shot, as well as the overall narrative scape and tone of the film.
By all means take advice and run regular survey screenings to reassure yourself as to what’s playing and what isn’t. And of course, collaborate with editors as suits your process. But do not be undermined by the idea that your intimate knowledge of your own material is a liability. The opposite is true. It is the life-blood of your editorial creativity.
“You lack objectivity” — i.e. “Let another director/editor in to edit your film.” All the best films are subjective. Stories are told from a point of view. Films recut or “taken over” by so-called “scissor hands” generally lose, not gain, from this process. [Weak film are still weak] after a recut by some outside “objective” editorial process, and so called “great films” saved by “scissor hands” were great films anyway.
It’s deeply undermining to have material compromised in this way no matter what the outcome for the film. It seems that “taking over” films in the edit suite from female directors is rather more prevalent than for male director/editor teams. Perhaps it’s an indicator of our lack of confidence as much as an indicator of an innate lack of respect or regard for a female filmmaker’s subjective vision, no matter what her level of experience.
If you can’t insist on standard DGA director’s cut rights and you don’t have final cut on your own film, at least make sure that the small print of the consultation process with your producers and financiers is actually a process to which you can subscribe. The best practice for avoiding endless, open-ended conflicting notes from multiple parties is a) ensuring that there is a lead note giver and b) confining the process to two sets of notes and a polish. Do sweat the detail of the fine print when it comes to the director’s cut process, as it’s the one clause financiers do read, reinterpret, and apply much more regularly to female filmmakers than male.
W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?
MM: African-American feminists have given us two important mantras I think are worth subscribing to:
“#MeToo” — essentially a license to call it out and be true to yourself. And “lift as you rise” — bring your sisters with you wherever and whenever you can.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
MM: In terms of impact and influence, I’m going to say from the contemporary canon I still find myself regularly recommending “13th” by Ava DuVernay to those who haven’t seen it. It’s the most important film by a female director I’ve seen in a very long time, and I remain blown away by it every time I watch it.
I find it: Revolutionary, as it turns the history of America on its head. Masterful in its treatment of an incredibly complex narrative. Dramatic — you cannot disengage for a second. Conceptually concrete, because the argument is so well constructed and so solid. Shocking, in its portrayal of man’s inhumanity to man. Inspiring, as so many of the participants are phenomenal thinkers and speakers. [And lastly] impactful — I think it will continue to be the most accessible accounts of the fallout of one of the most inhumane injustices in the history of civilization resulting in a culture of American racism that remains entrenched to this day
W&H: It’s been over a year since the reckoning in Hollywood and the global film industry began. What differences have you noticed since the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements launched?
MM: I don’t have such a big dent on the tip of my tongue from biting it! And it does seem that many of us feel more emboldened to call out, stand up, speak up, and be heard.
The sad part is that not many men seem to be listening. Some are reacting when required by media insistence or market forces. But I’ve yet to feel that the patriarchy running aspects of the industry is genuinely engaged in a conversation where it believes that change would be for the greater good and desires it. I hope I’m wrong and that in time that will change, but for now the impact feels one-sided.
Women, it seems, feel better, but men feel bad, sometimes defensive, or even anxious. And I’ve yet to encounter more than one or two male colleagues expressing ribald enthusiasm and jumping up and down with excitement at the prospect of engaging in a revolutionary new wave of fabulous female-made films.
Certain influential festival directors and distributors are clearly particularly reticent to ride the winds of change despite what looks, from a female perspective, like an unparalleled opportunity to make meaningful cultural impact, create a whole new commercially viable genre, and be lauded for it. It’s really quite bizarre how blinkered the response has been.
