Neasa Hardiman is a BAFTA-winning director and writer whose work spans film and television, including BBC/Netflix’s “Happy Valley” and Netflix’s “Jessica Jones.” Hardiman’s work circles around stories of power and politics, the outsider, and the struggle to connect.
“Sea Fever” will premiere at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival on September 5.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
NH: It’s a dreamy, emotionally-grounded, devastating thriller set on a trawler in the deep Atlantic. It’s about an intellectually brilliant young woman who struggles to connect with other people, whose academic field work means she’s thrown among the hostile, hardscrabble, close-knit crew of a ragged old trawler. But when they’re ensnared by a form of life disturbed from the deep Atlantic, her focused engagement with other living creatures transforms the crew’s destiny and her own.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
NH: I wanted to tell a story full of natural wonder that hits you in the pit of your stomach. I wanted to tell a story where men and women of different neurotypes and ethnicities all have agency and individuality. I wanted to tell a story about how the ship of humanity needs all hands on deck to right itself.
W&H: What do you want people to think about when they are leaving the theater?
NH: I don’t want to tell anyone what to think. But I’d like people to feel something and to ask questions about the importance of science, morality, and ethics in how we share our fragile planet.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
NH: It was a big creative challenge to make a film of this scale and scope on such a low budget. I was really blessed by terrific collaborators and brilliant actors — the actors breathe such complex, conflicted emotional life into every character. They are the heart and the soul of the film.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Share some insights into how you got the film made.
NH: The film is a co-production between small film companies in Ireland, Sweden, Belgium, and Scotland. I pitched the public funders in each country and won enough combined finance to get the film up on its feet.
It was a complex contractual arrangement; I had to find the right collaborators for the film, but also make sure the film featured a head of department from each participating country. We ended up with a terrific transnational team: an Irish cinematographer, a Belgian sound team, and a Swedish visual effects team.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
NH: As a writer-director, you get to create your own stories, then touch deep emotions and ideas with actors. You get to collaborate with talented people to create entire visual worlds and elaborate, complex sound worlds. It’s a form where you’re constantly challenged and constantly learning. How could you not be inspired to become a filmmaker?
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
NH: I wrote and directed a short film that was selected for the Berlin International Film Festival. On the plane on the way to the festival, an older Irish producer told me to give up screenwriting. That was pretty bad advice.
Best advice I ever got was from an older Irish director: when you’re shooting, you must ruthlessly follow your every intuition. Intuition is the key to creativity.
W&H: What advice do you have for other female directors?
NH: Say what you want. Speak your mind. Don’t ask for permission.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
NH: I’m going to cheat and give you my top eight, in chronological order!
Lois Weber’s “The Blot” (1921): Lois Weber was a pre-eminent director in early Hollywood, a brilliant and emotive visual storyteller with a strong sense of justice, and a clear grasp of the power of film to change minds. This film is as forceful and fresh now as it was a hundred years ago.
Ida Lupino’s “Outrage” (1950): Lupino’s a superb noir director who confronts rape culture in a movie far ahead of its time.
Agnieszka Holland’s “Europa Europa” (1990): Holland sustains an extraordinary tone in this film based on the true story of a Holocaust survivor. She doesn’t shrink from the horrors of his experience, but she manages to inject a distinctively Eastern European bleak bewilderment.
Claire Denis’ “Beau Travail” (1999): A mesmeric, dreamlike exploration of the disciplined world of the French Foreign Legion. It’s compelling and gorgeous and crammed with emotional tension.
Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” (2008): Bigelow is unrivaled as a formalist, and this film is an object lesson in how to sustain tension and wrong-foot your audience. It’s a penetrating study of masculine vulnerability where she reflects the thematic circularity of her story through effortless mastery of her imagery.
Celine Sciamma’s “Girlhood” (2014): I love every film Sciamma’s made. This is a bare-knuckled, beautiful portrait of a young black girl who acquires social power as part of a gang of four girls in a Paris banlieue. The scene where all four young women dance together to Rihanna’s “Diamond” is glorious.
Ana Lily Amirpour’s “A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night” (2014): A vampire in a chador is a terrific central premise, and Amirpour’s film is a stylishly delirious and disorientating political metaphor delivered with deadpan humor.
Rungano Nyoni’s “I Am Not a Witch” (2017): This film features terrific use of music to support a tragic and fascinating exploration of cultural doublethink, superstition, and social strictures. Nyongi creates powerful visual metaphors for traditions where magic and misogyny combine in a poisonous form of othering.
W&H: What differences have you noticed in the industry since the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements launched?
NH: My experience is that the culture on film sets has improved; there’s far less annoying innuendo or bad behavior now. I think there’s a slightly greater awareness of unconscious bias in hiring. I sense a greater interest from funders in films by and about women. For lasting change, though, we need to increase the number of women in leadership roles in our industry.
