Mirrah Foulkes is an award-winning Australian actor, writer, and director. Foulkes has directed three short films: “Dumpy Goes to the Big Smoke,” “Florence Has Left The Building,” and “Trespass.” “Judy and Punch” is her feature directorial debut. Foulkes’ acting credits include “Top of the Lake,” “Animal Kingdom,” and “The Crown.”
“Judy and Punch” will premiere at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival on January 27.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
MF: A bat-shit crazy origin story about the Punch and Judy puppet show.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
MF: Eddy Moretti and Danny Gabai at Vice had seen some of my shorts and asked if I would be interested in writing a live-action Punch and Judy film for them. I thought it was historically interesting material and wanted to make something big and fun and weird, and Eddy and Danny encouraged me to go nuts with it.
W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?
MF: Holy shit, that might be the greatest film ever made!
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
MF: Every part of it was a challenge, actually. Writing it was really hard — it was the first feature-length script I’d written so I was sort of teaching myself how to write in the process.
There were so many challenges during the shoot and I was doing it all for the first time so it felt big and scary pretty much every day.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
MF: Vice Films commissioned the script. When it came time to make it we realized the best shot we had at getting the budget we needed was to shoot in Australia and utilize the Producer Offset as well as Screen Australia funding and state funding bodies. Shooting in Oz created a whole lot of location challenges, but it also meant I could surround myself with people I knew and had worked with before and that was really nice.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
MF: I was an actor before I started writing and directing and I felt pretty uninspired by a lot of the scripts I was reading. I found it disempowering not having any control over the work I was getting so I just started making shorts to see if I would like it.
I love the film industry and I want my career to have longevity — that can be hard as an actor.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
MF: Worst: If you change your name and lose weight, you’ll get more acting work.
Best: Be kind and brave.
W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?
MF: Be kind and brave. Work really, really hard and push the people working with you. Care a lot and be a perfectionist, but also find a way to manage stress and anxiety.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
MF: It’s hard to pick just one but Jane Campion’s “The Piano” would be right up there. I think all of Jane’s work is amazing and she was such a trailblazer when she started — there were very few female directors at that time. “The Piano” is beautifully cinematic and the performances are just so good. I think Jane has a way of getting truth in performance like very few other directors.
W&H: It’s been a little 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?
MF: I get asked to talk about gender more than anything else. I don’t like talking about gender all the time: I would rather just talk about movies and be referred to as a filmmaker rather than a female filmmaker. But this is a long overdue conversation and it needs to happen.
Until the gender disparity in film is addressed we will only be seeing the same stories on screen again and again and we will miss out on a whole world of interesting voices. There’s an incredible pendulum swing happening and I hope it settles in a place that means we don’t have to talk about gender so much.
