Brooklyn producers: 'A lot of the untold stories are female'

In the more than eight decades the Academy Awards have existed, only 10 British films have taken home the trophy for best film. Not a single one has had a female lead.

But this year, the two UK films nominated in the best film category – Brooklyn, starring Saoirse Ronan, and Room, starring Brie Larson – are attempting to overturn the gender-skewed precedent, both boasting strong female performances.

For the two-woman producing team behind Brooklyn, Amanda Posey and Finola Dwyer, this is not the first time their film has challenged the status quo. In 2009, their first co-produced film, the female-led An Education, was also nominated for the best picture Oscar, though it lost out to The Hurt Locker.

Dwyer said she was drawn to adapting Colm Tóibín’s novel, which tells the story of Éilís, a young Irish woman who travels from Ireland to Brooklyn in the 1950s, because it resonated with her own family background. Dwyer’s mother travelled from Ireland to New Zealand in the same period as the novel is set. “Brooklyn was such a personal story for me – it was my mum’s story and it was my story to some extent.”

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However, she and Posey were also struck by the unique perspective on the Irish immigrant experience born from having a narrative unfold through the eyes of a young woman. “There’s never been an immigration story from a female’s perspective, where she hasn’t been diseased, or had to prostitute herself, or been very vulnerable in some way,” said Dwyer.

Posey said that with films such as An Education and Brooklyn, as well as their current project, Their Finest Hour and a Half, which is set during the Blitz in 1941 and stars Gemma Arterton, it was not simply that they wanted to take on projects that pointedly championed gender equality on screen.

“We are always looking to tell something from a fresh perspective and with a fresh insight and it just so happens that, because of the way history is told, a lot of the untold stories are female. We are drawn to it from a storytelling point of view rather than specifically because it is based around women,” said Posey.

She said in an industry that churned out films with two-dimensional characters “sadly too many of those roles are for women.”

In an industry that is still male-dominated both in the UK and in Hollywood, where women directed just 7% of the top 250 grossing films and only 23% were directed by women, Posey and Dwyer acknowledge that their female-run production company is something of an exception.

“Every aspect of my career has been majority male and I suppose you just get used to that,” said Dwyer. “We might still be the exception but hopefully we are helping to pave the way and be an example of what you can do as a woman in this industry. I don’t think we stop to think about it too much, we just get on with it.”

Both producers said they felt the gender imbalance was most stark when it came to directors.

“When we draw up lists of directors for our projects, you can really see how few female options there are,” said Posey. “It can be pretty shocking.” She said in an industry that was always focused on the next big thing, it was still very unforgiving on women who took any time away from their careers to have children, and she said a change of attitude was needed.

Dwyer’s whole career was shaped by the sexism that dominated the film industry when she started out in New Zealand. Having wanted initially to be behind the camera, she was told that was a man’s job, and so instead turned to editing, before becoming a producer.

She acknowledged that even though things had progressed since then, “an overall shift” was needed to make the film industry more representative.

Both Posey and Dwyer said they hoped the box office success of Brooklyn, which has taken $35m (£25m) in the US, would make distributors and investors realise that female-driven films were not “too risky”.

As well as Their Finest Hour and a Half, the producing pair are also adapting Jon Ronson’s book The Psychopath Test, which will star Scarlett Johansson. They are also beginning work on a TV spin-off of Brooklyn, which will be based around the Brooklyn boarding house and see Julie Walters revive her role as Mrs Keogh.

Unlike the film, it will not be written by Nick Hornby and the director has yet to be decided.

Dwyer said the idea of developing Brooklyn beyond the big screen had come to her early on, even before the film’s massive box-office success. “That will be a fun project,” she said. “It was such an interesting time in America politically, and while we couldn’t really delve into that in the film, the TV series will be a chance to explore the cultural and social backdrop of the book.”