In 2005, Benjamin Gilmour and his partner Kaspia booked me to tap dance on the bar for the launch of their flamboyant Sydney cabaret series. We met backstage between feather boas and lots of glitter. So it was a surprise to both of us to bump into each other at the Berlin Film Festivalin 2008.
This time I was covering the festival for IF magazine and The Diplomat and he wasn’t producing a cabaret but presenting his film set in Pakistan ‘Son of a Lion’. “In making Son of a Lion, Gilmour was seeking to provide a platform for a local story that balanced the Islamophobia he was witnessing in the press and among ‘educated, intelligent friends’ back home. He sought to share the humour and humanity of the people who had welcomed him in 2001.” I wrote in my Diplomat article you can read here.
Ten years later, he is back with an astonishing feature film about an Australian soldier returning to Afghanistan to apologise to a family whose father/husband he shot and killed in a raid. It’s an intense story and an astonishing accomplishment with actor Sam Smith and himself being the only Australians on set working with a make shift crew and cast of local non actors in not particularly secure locations. “We had to make sure we paid the security well, if you know what I mean,” he says, referring to the kidnapping threats in the area.
Without budget for a cinematographer, Gilmour was forced to be a one man band, shooting, directing, producing and trying to convince Smith that everything was going to be alright.
The Q & A in Sydney led by Margaret Pomeranz had the audience gasping and applauding both Smith and Gilmour who admitted that things got pretty hairy at some points with Smith suffering a (very understandable) paranoia attack half way through the shoot, surviving on 3 hours sleep a night and sleeping with a knife and his passport under his bed.
However the aim to show the beauty, depth, compassion and intelligence of the local people despite the horrors of war and contrarily to their barbaric inhumane depiction in mainstream media was a success and Gilmour and Smith are now touring the country and the world representing the film, out now Australia wide.
