Having started in the year 2000, Pigeon Shrine FrightFest is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. The festival has a long history of supporting burgeoning film talent from across the globe, but most specifically those from the United Kingdom. One such voice that FrightFest has always championed is that of Joanne Mitchell. The team screened her short film, Sybil, which she directed, as well as several movies that she had produced and starred in. Now FrightFest and Mitchell level up their relationship as she opens the film with her directorial feature debut, Broken Bird.
Sybil Chamberlain (Rebecca Calder) works as a professional mortician at a funeral parlour. She has spent her life looking for love. Brought up as a privileged and carefree child, at the age of ten, she lost everything in a tragic accident. A darkness fell over her as the bright lights of her life were snuffed out swiftly and cruelly. Now an emptiness, an aching loneliness, prevails; a gloomy void she seeks to fill. Reality and reason are slipping away from Sybil. Her dark desires are becoming more insatiable and progressively out of control. Will she ever find happiness and contentment, especially as the company she keeps is mainly deceased?
Ahead of the world premiere of Joanne Mitchell’s directorial feature debut, THN were able to speak with her about the journey that Broken Bird has been on, and exactly what it means to be opening this year’s FrightFest.
Firstly, congratulations on Broken Bird being selected for FrightFest. It’s the opening film, opening the big 25th anniversary – how are you feeling about the screening?
I am feeling very excited obviously ,and very honoured to be the opening film at FrightFest, especially as it’s their 25th anniversary – and in all honesty – also nervous I suppose. It’s quite a big thing for me that, for anyone I guess, to open the film festival. I feel like there’s quite a lot riding on it.
You’ve had quite a long history with FrightFest. They’ve supported you through your short films and your writing process, so it must be extra special to now be screening your feature debut at the festival?
The guys at FrightFest – Alan, Greg, Paul, Ian – they have always been so supportive of myself, and my partner Dominic [Brunt], and we love FrightFest. We absolutely love that festival. We go most years, even if we haven’t got anything screening. We just love the atmosphere there, the choice of films, and the audience. It’s an absolute honour having sort of been through a lot with them, in our journey with FrightFest it’s kind of the icing on the cake really to be screening Broken Bird, especially for the opening film of their incredible festival. I am very grateful to them because they have always really supported me throughout the process, short films and features.
How have you been describing Broken Bird to people?
Well, it’s definitely a horror genre drama. I’ve been describing it as a story about a woman who has suffered a tragedy in her past as a child, and since that tragedy has been searching, yearning for love and belonging. She just searches for love and belonging and to regain her family, but just not in the most conventional way.
Broken Bird is your first feature and has been a long time coming, what was it about this story that felt like the right one?
Well interestingly enough there were quite a few scripts that we had developed and it was a film production company called Catalyst Studios. I knew one of the producers there and he emailed me and said, “do you have any scripts that you would like to submit?” It was part of a slate of six female filmmakers that were going to make all the films in Serbia in Belgrade. I had a number of scripts and I thought well, okay, let’s try Broken Bird, which was then titled ‘Sybil’. It was still a work in progress. It needed a lot of work, but I thought let’s try it because I loved the character. We made a short film with the character and it felt like a natural progression. So I chose that one first and if they didn’t like it then we had others I could submit. They really liked the idea of it, but absolutely we needed to do much more work on it. So we worked with them for about a year developing the script.
I suppose I always felt an attachment to the character, to the story that Tracy Sheals, who was the original story writer, brought to when we made the short film. I always thought there was more to the character than what we had in the short film; you’ve got 15 minutes and seven pages. There needed to be a lot more development and I was intrigued and I wanted to see how far we could go, how deep we could go, and how strange and odd we could go. I think Dominic Brunt who wrote the screenplay has done a really fantastic job. He captured all the elements that I wanted within the story.
I felt it was a story that I hadn’t necessarily seen, although I’m sure there’s films out there about mortuary workers falling in love with dead people, of course there are, but I wanted to see it entirely from a female perspective. I didn’t want her to be the stereotypical female, you know, falling in love with people, needing someone and being weak. I wanted her to be complicated, dark, funny, strange and nuanced, and I think that’s exactly what Rebecca Calder brought to the part. I wanted something a bit different, but I also wanted the audience to be taken on her journey and to really immerse themselves in her character, but also to question themselves whether they liked or all didn’t like her, because what she does is horrific and terrible but there’s some sympathy and vulnerability to her as well through her past. I thought it was really important that everything that she did, what you see on the screen is based in truth and there is a reason for it.
Rebecca Calder plays Sybil, this wonderfully complex and isolated character. What did Rebecca bring that made you believe she had what was required for the role?
We cast in Belgrade by Zoom because there wasn’t any time to go back to London or bring anybody out for casting. I saw a number of actresses for Sybil, and for me, as soon as I saw Rebecca on screen, I knew she was the one. She has an enigmatic quality, which I was totally drawn to. I found myself leaning into the screen when I watched her tape. Interestingly it was set in the north of England and when she did her tape, she did it with a slight Geordie accent. I hadn’t heard it in my head as Geordie. I always thought it was going to be Northern. But as soon as she did it in Geordie, I thought that’s it, that’s Sybil. There is something about the Geordie accent that is so nice. It feels quite kind and it was such a juxtaposition to the darkness of what she is capable of, so I loved that about her. I thought that was fantastic.
Then I had an interview with her on Zoom and I just liked her presence. I liked her stillness, her warmth, and I knew that if she had that, we could go further. We could really go deeper. I didn’t meet her until she actually flew out to Serbia when she got the part. So it was slightly nerve-racking, but I knew as soon as I saw her tape, she was the one. I was really lucky to have her.
Given that Broken Bird is so driven by performance, and as someone with a background in acting, do you think that this helped you as a director?
I think so. I would definitely say that I was an actor’s director just because of my background and understanding of character, and where one has to go and the questions that the actors are asking. We would talk a lot about Sybil. Her background, the life that we don’t see from when the accident happened to where we are now in the film, and what she has been through. Even though that’s not there on-screen, it was really important that we have that backstory so it was really based in reality. From that base we could then build, and I think Rebecca is such a talented, clever, thoughtful, creative actress, that the questions that she was asking me all the time were fantastic because that’s what I would be asking as an actor as well. We could go really deep with the character and explore. There were some things that she would question on set and say, “is this right?” or “can we try this?” and I’d be, “yeah, absolutely.” I really wanted her to make the character her own. It was so clear in my head and my vision what I wanted it to be, or how I saw it to be, but I didn’t want to press that on her too much. I really wanted her to find that and she nailed it.
I love the use of colour throughout, it seems to be switching between icy blues and greys to fiery oranges. These seem to further reflect Sybil’s inner duality, but what was your thought process behind them?
I did a lookbook before we started shooting, which I would show to all the production team and the crew and the HOD’s. I really wanted to have that sort of coldness; the blues, the silvers for the mortuary and then have the warmth of all the other colours. For example, the warmth – we are moving into autumn, you’ve got the oranges, you’ve got the reds – but then mix it with the sort of the greys and blues the more slated colours. It was very important for me the landscape that there was a sort of coldness to it, but again a warmth because that as you said definitely portrays Sybil’s conflict. I also wanted to have that sort of warmth of Mr. Thomas and his sort of antique feel, and then the coldness of the mortuary, which would then portray again Sybil’s inner conflict, her desire for love, but also her darkness. The colour palette was clear on the lookbook and the mood boards and I worked a lot with my DoP, Igor Marovic, also with the production designer and the art department so we are working from the same page. It was a delight.
Just looking back on the last few years, this is a very different type of film to open FrightFest. What do you hope the reaction from the FrightFest family is other than of course, enjoying it. What do you hope that they take from it?
I want people to walk away thoughtful as well as being entertained, which I hope it is as well because there are moments of black comedy shall I say and wonder, but there’s also a loneliness to the piece which is obviously portrayed through Sybil and her isolation. So I want people to question themselves, not everybody is as black and white as they seem. No one is inherently evil. No one is inherently good. She’s very multi-layered. I really wanted that to affect the audience, for them to question themselves, do they like her, do they not like her? Why do they like her, because that’s weird. She’s done some terrible things, but actually there is something quite likeable about her. I never want to watch anything vanilla. I want people to have an opinion and hopefully they’ll question themselves about themselves, and what they perceive about other people and their actions, because what we see on the surface is not always what is the truth.
Broken Bird screens at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest on Thursday 22nd August. More information on the film and tickets can be found on the FrightFest website. Broken Bird arrives in Showcase cinemas across the UK from Friday 30th August 2024.
