Project Submission Pack
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PROJECT SUBMISSION PACK FILM: A Girl from Mogadishu DATE: June 2017 1. Submission Form p2-3 2. Information Pack p4-16 3. Sales Estimates p17 4. Script Report p18-20 5. Script p21-118 F I L M S U B M I S S I O N F O R M PROJECT TITLE: A Girl from Mogadishu DATE: Monday June 12th, 2017 SHORT SYNOPSIS / LOGLINE Born into a refugee camp in war-torn Somalia, Ifrah Ahmed was trafficked to Ireland as a teenager and turned the testimony of her traumatic childhood experiences of FGM/C* into a force for good emerging as one of the world’s most foremost award-winning international activists against GBV. ‘Silence may be the rust on the razor that threatened to cut my throat, but it wasn’t my tongue they cut.’ APPLICANT DETAILS NAME: Mary McGuckian TEL: + 353 86 012 7563 COMPANY Pembridge Film Productions Limited EMAIL: [email protected] c/o Windmill Lane Pictures CONNECTION 29, Herbert Street Writer/Director/Producer ADDRESS: TO FILM Dublin, 2 Ireland PROJECT DETAILS Mary McGuckian / Pembridge Various – See Resumes in PRODUCER/S: CREDITS /AWARDS Gilles Waterkeyn / U Media Production Proposal Production Services Provided By: Under Ground Films Ireland Various – See Resumes in LINE PRODUCER: U Media Productions Belgium CREDITS /AWARDS Production Proposal Dune Film Productions Morocco Windmill Lane Pictures Ireland A Girl From Mogadishu has been shortlisted for the ATHENA WRITER: Mary McGuckian CREDITS /AWARDS BLACKLIST in the US and developed with the assistance of the Irish Film Board GENRE: PRODUCTION CO'S Feature Film – Drama – Bio Pic Irish and Belgian & NATIONALITY: BUDGET E6,000,000 NAME: CREDITS /AWARDS Proposed Approached Confirmed LOI DIRECTOR: Mary McGuckian Various See Production Proposal X Birth of A Nation & How To Get CAST 1: Aja Naomi King X Away With Murder/Shonda Grimes CAST 2: Barkhad Abdi Captain Philips & Eye In The Sky X Black & ‘European Shooting Star CAST 3: Martha Canga Antonio X Award 2016’ CAST 4: SHOOTING SCHEDULE – Prep, Principal, Post, delivery PREP – Current and in hiatus – PRINCIPLE PHOTOGRAPHY – October 15th 2017 – POST PRODUCTION – Concurrent until end April 2017 – Delivery April 2017 FINANCE DETAILS AMOUNT FINANCIER NATURE OF INVESTMENT BUDGET % Proposed Approached Confirmed LOI EUROS U MEDIA TAX SHELTER AND 1,835,699 30.5% X SCREEN BRUSSELS EQUITY/SOFT LOAN 150,000 IRISH FILM BOARD SOFT LOAN 500,000 26% X S481 IRISH TAX CREDIT 1,193,487 WINDMILL LANE 170,000 PICTURES INVESTMENTS 15% X 800,000 PEMBRIDGE PICTURES HEAD GEAR plus US GAP 1,852,500 28.5% X INVESTORS plus tbc F I L M S U B M I S S I O N F O R M SALES INFORMATION SALES AGENT: The Exchange SALES ESTIMATES: CONTACT: Brian O’Shea LOW: $1,300,000 TEL: + 1 310 935 3760 MEDIUM: $ - EMAIL: [email protected] HIGH: $3,270,000 PRESALES TERRITORY: DISTRIBUTOR: MG: RIGHTS: n/a n/a n/a EXCLUDED / WITHHELD TERRITORIES: DETAILS: US Separate Sale Envisated PRODUCTION INFORMATION COUNTRY: % SPEND: DETAILS: The film will shoot primarily in Ireland then Belgium and then IRELAND 57% Morocco with essentially Belgian crew and post extensively in Ireland - The film will shoot for two weeks in Belgium and then travel BELGIUM 43% Belgian crew to Ireland and Morocco – U Media VFX will also undertake the film’s VFX - a girl from mogadishu production proposal production proposal summary information a girl from mogadishu contents logline short synopsis about the story – director’s note about the script – writer’s note key cast key heads of department locations production structure about ifrah ahmed about fgm director’s filmography producer’s resume production proposal summary information a girl from mogadishu logline ‘Silence may be the rust on the razor that threatened to cut my throat, but it wasn’t my tongue they cut.’ Born into a refugee camp in war-torn Somalia, Ifrah Ahmed was trafficked to Ireland as a teenager and turned the testimony of her traumatic childhood experiences of FGM/C* into a force for good emerging as one of the world’s most foremost award-winning international activists against GBV**. *FGM/C stands for Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting **GBV stands for Gender Based Violence production proposal summary information a girl from mogadishu short synopsis ‘My name is Ifrah Ahmed, I am an Irish Citizen and a survivor of FGM’… This is how the Girl from Mogadishu consistently introduces herself on the world stage, as an international activist against FGM/C and this is her story… Circumcised at eight years of age. Raped by wandering militiamen at twelve years of age. Fully infibulated again at thirteen years of age and then married off by her grandmother to a fifty-year old man who regularly beat her; Ifrah Ahmed runs away to a place she had once known as home in war torn Mogadishu to find it had become the kind of battleground now known as ‘Black Hawk Down’. A neighbor, recognizing her as the daughter of a woman whose sister had emigrated from Mogadishu to Minnesota, undertakes to find a way to get her out and sends a message through the Somali grapevine to seek help on her behalf. Within days, a stranger appears at the door to tell her that he has been sent by her aunt from Minnesota and that she should follow him. She gathers her things into a plastic bag and sets out on the most perilous journey imaginable up through war-torn Somalia into Ethiopia all the way to Addis Ababa Airport in the company of traffickers. Finally landing, not in Minnesota, USA but Dublin, Ireland. Not a word of English, no prior education and hardly an item of clothing against the cold, she finds the food bizarre but the welcome hearty in the Irish asylum seeking system. Her fears begin to subside and her traumatic days, she thinks, are behind her, until a routine medical smear test elicits such looks of horror on the faces of her Irish doctors that she suffers a profound sense of shame. They say that anger is the flip side of shame. Channeling the feelings on both sides of that coin, she reacts incredibly quickly, learns English at break-neck speed and unearths an enviable technical talent for harnessing social media. Within months she is campaigning for better conditions for asylum-seekers arriving in Ireland. She galvanizes her fellow refugees into action and sets up the ‘United Youth of Ireland’ to campaign for more understanding of foreign immigrants in Ireland. Joining ‘Amnesty International’ she becomes one of their most effective activists. She works with a number of other NGOs, including UNICEF on special projects related to FGM. And single-handedly harasses every politician in Ireland right the way up to the president to pass FGM/C criminal justice legislation in Ireland. As an Irish citizen, she presents her testimony on behalf of Ireland’s MEPs on the occasion of the ratification of the UN Convention against FGM/C at the European Parliament and it is passed unanimously. Thus commences her now lauded professional career as an international activist. production proposal summary information a girl from mogadishu about the story - director’s note While the ambition of the film is clearly to raise awareness about FGM/C and contribute to the campaign for abandonment of the practice worldwide, its underlying themes speak to a darker truth and offer emotional testimony to explore the issue beyond the statistics. Female Genital Mutilation is a barbaric act that breaks with almost every article of the Charter on Human Rights and leaves its victims, (200 million women worldwide today living with its consequences), physically and psychologically scarred for life. Yet while its pervasion has been associated with more extreme Islamic interpretations of the Koran perpetrated by male Muslim leaders, the practice in truth is rooted in a tradition that pre-dates Islam and which in its everyday practice follows the female line. Mothers who insist that their daughters are cut were themselves cut by their mothers and grandmothers before them. Tribal traditions, Islamic interpretations, civil war and patriarchal inheritance regimes where the marriageability of a young woman is evaluated on the basis of assurances of her purity as well as her dowry all contribute to the complex cultural context within which Female Genital Mutilation continues to flourish despite legislation prohibiting it in most of the countries where it is practiced. For so long a taboo topic, the appropriate world health organizations have now recognized the shocking extent of the practice, endeavored quite successfully to bring it to the attention of the relevant authorities, leveraged significant changes with the enshrinement of specific legislation against the practice worldwide and are now in the process, finally, of promoting its eradication with pilot programs in a number of African and Asian countries proving effective when properly funded. What this film can achieve, in the way that movies which are as much part of a movement as a movie in themselves, is to speak in particular to women worldwide about breaking the cycle that passes the practice down the female line. But more specifically Ifrah’s story has the potential to empower women of all traditions, no matter what their backgrounds and experiences, to become a force for change, to quite literally turn a tale of adversity into a call for action. The testimony of Ifrah Ahmed, on which the script for A Girl from Mogadishu is based, touches on all these issues. It is a courageous gift to the global FGM campaign intended to promote awareness and understanding of the extent and complexity of the issues involved.