David Miller and Steven Bray of Poorman’s Productions recently wrapped the drama Amal, the feature directorial debut of Richie Mehta. The film, slated for a fall release, stars Rupinder Nagra as an auto rickshaw driver in India whose hard life takes an unexpected turn. Miller writes here about Telefilm’s encouragement in helping the young production team overcome great challenges to get the film made.

In October 2005, we entered the doors of Telefilm’s Ontario office for the first time for a development meeting in which we announced we wanted to make our first feature film in New Delhi for $1 million, with major stars from India, and – oh yes – we wanted to do it in just over a year.

In retrospect, I am shocked that we were not thrown out of the building. Granted, we had just won the $10,000 2005 TIFF Pitch This! competition, so we had some confidence, but we were still shy the other $990,000. Nonetheless, Telefilm did not have us removed. They didn’t even laugh. Instead, they challenged us.

Telefilm had a new mandate – more films, lower budgets, diversity, and a desire to develop and nurture new talent. We were going to find out just how serious they were.

We received development funding from Telefilm in January 2006. That was a good day – always nice to see mountains of paperwork rewarded with a cheque. We had plans for that money: a development trip to India, a new script, prep for production, etc. And although Telefilm may or may not have thought November 2006 was an achievable principal production date, we continued to strive for it.

By late October, we had defied many obstacles: got our broadcast sales, Seville Pictures came on to distribute, Telefilm was behind our production, Richie and Steven were already in India setting up, and all seemed to be on track.

That is, until Lisa Ray, our lead actress, had to pull out. This, of course, meant all our funding could vanish.

After a day of phone calls with my partners, our executive producers Robin Cass and Peter Starr, and Seville’s John Hamilton, it finally came down to one phone call – from Dan Lyon, Telefilm’s feature film unit director, Ontario and Nunavut.

I told him the news and he replied, ‘David, if it was easy to make films, everyone would do it.’ And although it sounded good at the time, I recall thinking, ‘That’s great, but how is that going to ensure Telefilm and others don’t pull their funding?’ He then said, ‘Don’t give up yet, you can turn this thing around. I have confidence in you.’

Three days later, we restored our position with Seville, our broadcasters, funders, and, yes – Telefilm.

Our crew left for New Delhi on Halloween Day. I arrived a week later. We cast Koel Purie as our new leading lady, and began principal photography on Nov. 13. What followed involved 29 shooting days, 45 locations, five stars, 65 actors overall, 220 extras, 12-hour days, 113 script pages, a crew of up to 65, thousands of auto rickshaws, and, of course, zero sleep. And now, it’s all in the can.

The greatest attributes any organization or industry can possess are innovation, dedication and regeneration. By encouraging us instead of discouraging us (at least most of the time), Telefilm embraced change. Strength, foundation and growth come not from maintaining, but from pushing the boundaries. If this mentality continues, so will the growth of the Canadian film and television industry.