Meet Grant Scicluna, winner of the 2012 Iris Prize for The Wilding – the first winner from Australia. This is the first interview in our "Australia at Iris" series.
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In 2012, Grant Scicluna won the Iris Prize with his emotionally raw and powerful prison drama The Wilding. The film’s stark intensity and complex portrayal of love behind bars struck a chord with audiences and judges alike. Grant returned to Wales to direct Hurt’s Rescue through the Iris Prize, continuing his exploration of vulnerability and survival. He later wrote and directed the critically acclaimed feature Downriver, which screened at the Iris Prize Festival in 2016.
We caught up with Grant to reflect on his Iris journey and what’s next:
What was the inspiration behind The Wilding, and how did it feel to see the film resonate with the Iris audience back in 2012?
The Wilding was one of those freakish film projects which was always greater than the sum of its parts from the start. The idea arrived to me once I latched onto the question of what a relationship between two young inmates in a boys' prison might look like. The threat to their love resonated with a lot of talented people who made the film and I just feel like I guided the film out, rather than created it, if you know what I mean. Winning the Iris Prize still remains the highlight of my career. It was the pinnacle of this incredibly warm audience response to that film. I'd never had such a good response to a film I'd made. I was unused to it! Even though it was the fifth short film I'd directed, I felt a fraud to call myself a filmmaker. I felt I was a writer who directed my films out of necessity. I was always waiting to be unmasked and told to stop. Winning the Iris Prize gave me the confidence to feel as if I was a filmmaker.
Grant Scicluna (2012 Iris Prize Winner) with Magnus Mork (2010 Iris Prize Winner)
You returned to Wales to make Hurt’s Rescue through the Iris Prize. What was that experience like, and how did it influence your approach to filmmaking?
Hurt's Rescue was one of the first times I truly enjoyed myself on set. Not for one moment did I take for granted how lucky I was to have won the Iris Prize which meant I was back directing. And doing it in the mud and lush beauty of the Welsh countryside! So I just told myself to love every single moment, soak this up. Where the other films are a blur, I remember making that film so vividly. Even a decade later, I can still picture all the faces of our team, still smell that old Welsh longhouse, even the delicacy of the light. So different to Australian light! That was a really formative experience for me. Filmmaking can be very stressful. You can feel like you are being pecked at constantly. You can feel as if your vision is slipping away from you or was not ever truly in reach. What I walked away with having made Hurt's Rescue was this acute sense that as a director, while you are making the film, the film is also making you. You can let the process tear you up, or you can let it fill you up. That one was bolstering.
Team Hurt's Rescue
After winning the Iris Prize, you went on to direct Downriver, which screened at the 2016 Iris Prize Festival. How did your experience with Iris help shape the path toward your first feature?
I am proud that Downriver also went on to play Iris and that Thom Green and Kerry Fox both won the acting awards in 2016. I'm very proud of them for that. I remember talking with Berwyn at Iris about wanting to make Downriver and he said that Iris will open doors. How right he was. I'd written the script for Downriver even before all the shorts, well before The Wilding and Hurt's Rescue. It was so long in gestation, but then Iris was a breath of air towards the greenlight. You're only the hot new thing once and only for a short moment. So we capitalised on that quick smart and were able to get seats at a table previously denied to us. Don't you worry, we still got slapped back by the financiers and had to make the film on an absolute shoestring. Downriver shares a lot in common with Hurt's Rescue. There's an inventiveness to how we did it, a real low-budget ingenuity, long shots and sparseness, an almost old-fashioned approach to cinema. All of that was forged in the mud of the Welsh countryside. Many times I found myself saying on set, "On Hurt's Rescue, here's how we did it."
Grant Scicluna with 2013 Iris Prize Jury
Looking back, what moment from your time at the Iris Prize Festival stands out most?
I don't think it's any one moment. It's the friendships. Ten years on, when I think about my time at Iris, I remember first and foremost the new friends I gained from it before anything else. And there were plenty of other wonderful moments too. Like prizes, like opportunities, like basking as the chosen one hahaha... But, no. It's Berwyn and Grant. Friends from the audience. Those I sat on the Jury with. Of course, friends from the crew of Hurt's Rescue. So many wonderful people come together for Iris and I was very lucky to intersect with them all.
What themes or stories are exciting you most right now—and can you share anything about what you’re working on next?
The 'what's next' question is a vexed one. I'd love to bore you with my war stories from the film industry. The films, the outlines, the funding applications, the TV concepts, the writers' rooms, the zeitgeist projects, the unfashionable projects, conversations with agents, conversations with executives asking 'What are you looking for?' The industry is unrelenting. It churns through projects and a good many get chewed up and spat back out. I don't stop writing though. A few year's back I read Natalia Ginzburg's essay, "My Vocation" where she dissects the difference between writing as an occupation and as a vocation, and I took real courage from it. If I ever stop writing, reach to check for my pulse. This year I've turned my back on TV, which everyone said was some golden goose, which it's not, at least not in Australia. Instead I am developing low budget feature ideas again. I am gravitating to stories which have 'big heart'. I have three on the go. Now that I think about what connects them, they are all about unlikely people 'having a go at things'. So maybe that's a theme?
Grant Scicluna - on location of Hurt's Rescue
Lastly, Australia’s had four Iris Prize winners—three back-to-back! What is it about Aussie storytelling that connects so well with Iris… something in the water, or just coincidence?
Yes, I sat on the Jury when my friend Tim won for his film Gorillas. I even disadvantaged him by declaring a conflict of interest and not voting, but he still won! Around the time Australia had that run of wins, I think there was a storm of factors contributing to some very high quality queer filmmaking. We've always been pretty creative down here, perhaps it's the tyranny of distance. We have to be imaginative, to travel in our minds if you will, or we'll become stunted. We have brilliant film schools, many of them, and all of us who have won the Iris have emerged from different schools. I think that's important because you can't say any one of those winning Australian films is like the other. We also had for a long time this divisive debate around same sex marriage rights which just went on and on and became so ugly. I often think our films were reacting to that political situation. Add to this a period where our funding agencies really valued short films, setting a tone for the industry to get involved in making them, showing them, supporting them. So it's most definitely not something in the water or a coincidence. It's the product of a time when we placed value - politically, artistically, creatively, financially - upon the queer short. Do that and funnily enough, you find success.
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