Idris Elba stars in the Netflix original Beasts of No Nation, which streams in Canada starting Oct. 16.Netflix
When Beasts of No Nation arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival last month, the stakes were high. Not only was the child-soldier drama Netflix's first experiment with feature-length productions, it was also a test of whether director Cary Fukunaga could maintain the stellar reputation he earned helming the first season of HBO's True Detective.
The Globe and Mail sat down with Fukunaga while he was in Toronto to discuss expectations and the small wars that erupt when making a film.
I just came from the screening, and I have to say it was an intense way to start off a morning.
Did anybody walk out? I'm always curious.
No, everyone was pretty much static. It was odd – press and industry screenings usually have a dozen or so people stream out. Did people walk out in Venice?
No, I think it went well, though the subtitles were screwed up.
I've read that it was a treacherous shoot. You got malaria, right?
It was a hard one, but not because of the malaria. Malaria actually gave me a break because I was going non-stop with preproduction, and figuring out where we could shoot. It was crazy, but then I got malaria and I had a week down where I could focus on the writing. So it was a fortuitous bit of Stage 2 malaria. But the shoot itself was gruelling, and the hardest thing I've ever done. Emotionally, physically. The exhaustion was a grinder, every day.
It must have been a relief after all of that, then, when Netflix came knocking.
The Netflix deal was a huge relief, because the movie cost far more than we set out to spend. We didn't go crazy overbudget, but the actual cost of shooting in Ghana was so much more expensive than what we were told. I felt bad – not only was I trying to make this film as good as possible, but all these well-meaning investors were not going to get their money back, people who kicked in extra. Even [star Idris Elba] was a producer, as well. So with Netflix, it was also far more than we imagined we'd get from any distributor, because this isn't a horror movie or a comedy or a film that you walk out of a theatre from reaffirmed and happy about yourself. It's a much more tasking film, and the fact that they risked more for this, it weighs heavily on my shoulders.
And you pressed Netflix to ensure it also opened in a limited number of theatres, as well as streaming.
It was important to me that this film appeared live in cinemas. If I had my druthers, of course, it would be in cinemas around the world, but this is their [Netflix's] first foray into this, so it's a learning process.
How did you find Abraham Attah, who plays a child soldier so convincingly?
Our casting director did a ton of on-the-ground scouting, going to schools, trying to convince kids and parents and having the kids do exercises on video to see if they had a spark or look that worked for us. Abraham was part of 40 kids we brought in and started doing theatre workshops. I wasn't sure he was the one, but he was the one I felt was the most rounded, and he could play a pretty difficult arc, from this happy-go-lucky kid to one with a thousand-yard stare at the end of the story. I was sure he could do the middle stuff, but could we also do the playfulness required in the beginning? By the time we got to the end of filming, he got that experience. The Abraham I knew before shooting and the one I knew after, it's two different kids.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Beasts of No Nation streams on Netflix Canada beginning Oct. 16.
Barry Hertz