PRODUCTION NOTES

Radha Mitchell and Joel Edgerton

The Waiting CityWritten and directed by Claire McCarthy

Produced by Jamie Hilton

Release date: July 15, 2010Running time: 108 minutesRated: TBC

TECHNICAL INFORMATIONRunning Time 108 minutes 11 secs

Length (meters) 2968 meters Length (feet) 9736 feet

Ratio 1:2.40 Sound Dolby Digital

Language English

Filmed on location in Calcutta, India

THE WAITING CITYPresented by See Pictures & Sol Films

Finance PartnersScreen Australia, in association with the New South Wales Film & Television Office,

Spectrum Films & Efilm

KEY CASTFiona RADHA MITCHELL

BenScarlett

JOEL EDGERTONISABEL LUCAS

Krishna SAMRAT CHAKRABARTI

KEY CREWWriter/Director/Producer CLAIRE McCARTHY

Produced by JAMIE HILTONExecutive Producers LAWRENCE MYERS

RADHA MITCHELLMARK HAROWITZ

Cinematography DENSON BAKER ACSEditing VERONIKA JENET ASE

Production Design PETE BAXTERCostume Design JUSTINE SEYMOUR

Make-up PAUL PATTISONSound Design ANDREW PLAIN

Original Music MICHAEL YEZERSKICasting NIKKI BARRETT

Line Producers IRENE DOBSON & SHRUTI DESAIAssociate Producers GREG COBAIN

TESS JOSEPHDENSON BAKER

THE WAITING CITYSHORT SYNOPSIS

Directed by Australian rising talent Claire McCarthy, THE WAITING CITY tells the story of an outwardly happy Australian couple who journey to India to collect their adopted baby. When they arrive in Calcutta they discover that the adoption arrangements have still to be finalised. Soon the intoxicating mystic power of the city pulls them in separate and unexpected directions and the vulnerability of their marriage begins to reveal itself. The first Australian feature film to be shot entirely in India, THE WAITING CITY is an intimate, complex love story of transformation, set against the exhilarating epic backdrop of Calcutta.

LONG SYNOPSISAn outwardly happy Australian couple, Ben and Fiona, journey to Calcutta, India to

collect their adopted baby, but on arrival find that the arrangements at the agency have yet to be finalised.

They have no option but to wait in this chaotic, foreign place. But as the intoxicating mystic powers of the Indian city pulls them each in separate and unexpected directions, the vulnerability of their marriage begins to reveal itself.

Forced to confront their differences and the concealed deep secrets that they’ve both been long avoiding, Ben and Fiona ultimately rediscover themselves and a belief in life’s possibilities, their marriage and the invigorating power and joy of the human spirit.

THE WAITING CITY is written and directed by rising talent Claire McCarthy and produced by Jamie Hilton and brings together an incredible Australian cast including Radha Mitchell (Finding Neverland, Pitch Black), Joel Edgerton (The Square, Star Wars: Episode II & III) and Isabel Lucas (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen).

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENTOn an earthly level, THE WAITING CITY is a tale of Ben and Fiona, a childless

couple, who travel from Australia to India to adopt a little girl, Lakshmi. On a mythological level, Fiona and Ben’s “soul awakening”; their dreams, fantasies and hero’s journey, take the audience into a parallel narrative universe. Ben and Fiona are forced to delve both into the shadow lands of self and into a realm of mystery, dreams and spirits in order to achieve their hearts desire.

What they discover on their rollercoaster ride to parenthood scares them, shocks them, liberates them and forces them into a state of true catharsis - independently and as a couple. This is hopefully what distinguishes this film from a nice, polite, realist drama about a middle-class couple from Australia who try to adopt a third world baby and come up against insurmountable odds. In a brief pinpoint in time, we see a portrait of a marriage and a love story that has epic, mystic and psychological dimensions.

My personal experiences working in orphanages and within some of the poorest parts of India and also my experiences of making other films within this context, have offered me access into this rarely seen and unique world. Increasingly globalisation, the accessibility of travel, the high proportion of infertility of women in Australia in their late thirties and our fascination as a culture with exoticism have all been motivating factors to inspire this story.

THE WAITING CITY is an emotional, visually compelling and timely story that also has broad audience appeal. Radha Mitchell and Joel Edgerton, both wonderful actors, have brought an incredible authenticity, fearlessness and humanity to their roles. I am very proud of the many and varied contributions to the film from all of the wonderful cast.

On a personal and professional level, THE WAITING CITY augments my fascination with the alchemy of poetic, humanist, psychological drama. My on-going collaboration with producer Jamie Hilton, the strength of our top class assembled creative and technical team and the generous commitments from our investors hopefully has ensured that THE WAITING CITY is a startling and original project that will launch careers and offer a dynamic new direction for Australian cinema.

CLAIRE McCARTHY (DIRECTOR)ON ADOPTION & CALCUTTA AS LOCATION

I first came to Calcutta in 2002 with my youngest sister Helena. We did some volunteer work with Mother Teresa’s sisters, and while I was there, I met a lot of couples who were trying to adopt children, and I guess I just started to become intrigued by middle class Western couples needing to adopt children and what that actually meant, in terms of how the West’s delaying of choices in other parts of the world are taken for granted as part of life.

So fertility, I think, is a big thing that we don’t necessarily attach enough weight to as an important issue, and I chose Calcutta as a city specifically to set this story because I know Calcutta so well, having returned to the city a number of times since that first visit, finishing a documentary about my sister and the work we were doing with the Missionaries of Charity sisters. While there I started to interview people, couples who had been through IVF programs or who had tried to adopt children, or had adopted children and developed a database of all these different experiences.

I think adoption is a world issue, it’s not a local issue; it’s not a Calcutta issue as such. Africa, China, Korea - all these countries are also adopting children, but it just felt natural to me to set it there, because it felt like a city I knew and I love - and I had some experiences with it personally.

My intention though was never to make an essay about how to adopt a child and what that process was; it was never a how-to guide to adoption.

As a filmmaker it’s not my intention to be for or against adoption, it’s more to raise questions about what that means to take a child away from their culture and whether or not bringing them to another culture is a good or a bad thing.

ON WAITINGI realised, one of the things that was consistent about every adoption process, when I

spoke with couples who had tried to adopt, was the waiting period to receive a child. Often it can be quite emotionally draining for the couple - and I can imagine for the child as well, being in an orphanage or in an institution waiting to be received by parents. So looking at what is that emotional stranglehold for both the parents and the child, is of interest to me as a filmmaker.

Also, what happens to people while they’re waiting for the thing they really want, particularly when they’re rendered powerless by choices they’ve made earlier in their life, or when they think they can control their lives but are put into a waiting pattern, a holding pattern and just have to wait for the thing they want the most? So what happens when they just have to surrender to things that are out of their control? I think Calcutta’s a great city to explore that premise, because it is such a lively, overwhelming city - especially at the time of year the film is set, which is the Durga Puja - the time of year when the city celebrates the Hindu Goddess Durga (an event often referred to as the Rio Carnival of the East). Just everything is happening in this city all at once and I think for a couple to come here, from the comfortable bubble of their middle class life, to a city which is absolutely giving them life, in all its forms, in such a raw way, felt like the right way to address all the themes of the story.

ON LOVE & MARRIAGEI wanted The Waiting City to be a love story and an exploration of love within a long

term relationship, not an exploration of the fresh, dizzy optimism associated with the machinations of ‘falling in love’ between a couple who barely know each other. This is a couple who share a life together but have a certain distance from each other emotionally.

The film wasn’t ever intended primarily to be an adoption story. THE WAITING CITY finds Fiona and Ben at a vulnerable time of stasis individually and in within their marriage, which is in direct opposition to the chaos of Indian life. As they wait for their child, unresolved issues within the marriage begin to bubble to the surface and they are forced to examine themselves and their relationship . So this film is a portrait of a marriage and an exploration of love, plus also an examination of that process of waiting for something that you want so much, and how that can affect, shape and change you and within a city like Calcutta.

Marriages of convenience can gradually become marriages of love; marriages of love can become marriages of convenience and can return to love. I think that love can be such a slippery notion when it’s either convenient or inconvenient. Human emotions can be quite fickle, and so what can bind us, what can tie us together in time, what can build, can also tear us apart. I think that those things are interesting to look at. I think within marriage it’s such a little microcosm and you can explore a lot of issues just in that union between a man and a woman, the differences between the sexes, and the choices they make.

ON CHOICES FOR WOMEN AND NOTIONS OF FAMILYAs a woman, it’s interesting to me that within my culture and where I come from, I’m

encouraged to be powerful, to do anything, yet the choices I make personally have an inevitable knock-on effect with my career. This is a common issue a lot of women juggle with in their lives.

Women often delay personal decisions until later in life because they would like to have a career, and then find themselves at a strange intersection. You wonder, how do I be powerful, how do I be a woman, and yet how do I fit in children, have a meaningful experience of motherhood, have a family, and perhaps be in a sustainable relationship.

These things are really difficult to navigate because regardless of the leaps and bounds women have made in their careers and in the pioneering and re-balancing that has been forged for us in the workforce, we still have windows on our capacity to have children, we still have age limits.

Some of the interesting questions women face now are about how to find a balance and an internal peace in an increasingly relentless world. And this is a tightrope. We are in new territory b/c there are so many paths to follow. And we want to control everything. And we want it all now.

So for me, The Waiting City is looking at the tension between our own desires to tick boxes in our lives and to look at what needs to adjust within us to rise to the challenges of life itself. Motherhood, family, relationships, struggling with these things is universal. Earning the right to be a human being and to live our lives offering the best of ourselves, is our biggest struggle and our mandate to each other.

ON HER INTENTION FOR THE FILMEssentially what I’m trying to do with The Waiting City is to present something that is

entertaining, that’s uplifting to an audience, that raises questions, hopefully moves people, is emotional, and is ultimately a love story. It’s not trying to be too clever, it’s not trying to be

too heavy, it’s meant to be an entertainment piece that will move people and provoke them to think about things that may be relevant. Because I don’t think I’ve got the answers and I don’t think anyone really does either. I think we just have to keep moving forward and try our best, try to move forward with love, and embrace each other, and each other’s cultures, and try to understand each other. I think that’s all we can really do.

INTERVIEW WITH CLAIRE McCARTHY (DIRECTOR)Can you explain Ben’s character?

Ben is a struggling artist really. He was a musician in a former life, and when we find him in the story he’s somewhat broken as a man. He has experienced success as a musician, and he has reinvented himself as a music producer, so he’s grappling with ways to be able to express himself in a different way, as an older man who’s now not successful as a musician. He’s a man that has so much potential, but often won’t allow himself to fulfil that.

So he’s very talented but he’s suffering from a bit of writer’s block, artistic block. When he comes to Calcutta, he’s exposed to a lot of new expressions, new ideas, and starts to have a change of heart about the way he sees life. He also suffers from depression, so that’s a little thread throughout the story as well, about how he deals with depression, and how Fiona relates to him with that as well.

He’s a character who’s in some respects a ‘man child’. Without trying to reduce the character or anything like that, he really is a character who’s an amalgam of a boy and a man. Through the journey of the film, he steps up to fatherhood and he steps up to being a husband in a way that Fiona needs him to be and in a way that he needs to be to be a complete person. That’s kind of the essence of his journey.

What is the essential difference between Ben and Fiona? Not only that they’re man and woman, but what is the basic difference in how they look at life?

Fiona’s a lot more driven and ambitious than Ben. She’s a powerful, almost volatile character. She’s fought with a lot of judgments and misconceptions at the beginning of the story, and I guess her journey is a softening to life and the city of Calcutta and also to her marriage to her husband. For Fiona there’s an opening; a sense of acceptance and surrender to things she was always trying to control. So I guess she’s a very powerful, strong, woman, who is still able to balance her priorities, but sees life from a different vantage point by the end of the film. So the intrinsic differences between them are almost a rebalancing of the opposites of the two of them, and being able to see them as part of a whole - as husband and wife; man and woman.

Tell us about Radha Mitchell playing Fiona’s character.I’ve always thought she was an incredible actress and I’ve wanted her from the very

start. Her family’s quite interested in India, they’re “India-philes” and she has an Indian name. Apart from that, I wanted an actress that would understand India from the inside - who had lived there, had experiences, understood it from the perspective of an insider, so that we could construct a performance that would be able to be seen from the outside, then bring it into that very deep place it needed to reach by the end of the film. So that was really important to me, that there was an actress that had the range that she has, the dynamism that she has, and also had an understanding of India. It was a blessing to have her, it was a blessing that she came to us, and it’s been absolutely amazing working with her. Her sense of play, and the trust we have between us, and the collaboration that we’ve had all the way through, has just been absolutely a dream relationship, I couldn’t have asked for more. She’s just given gold in the film, and her contribution has been absolutely valuable.

And about Joel Edgerton, who plays Ben?Joel was a little bit more difficult to cast. The character of Ben had to be likeable,

even though his traits are quite difficult - he has depression; he’s broken and in some ways he suffers from creative block and he was also formerly this other person in another life - this younger, famous, musician-person. So I needed to find someone who was likeable and had a sense of play; and that we would like from the very beginning. This was also important for Radha’s character too - that we see them both as being people we could relate to and want to go on a journey with. That we wouldn’t go, ugh, these guys are just people that we’re not interested in watching, because they’re just whining all the time, or they’re ugly, the way that they see life and the way they react to things is ugly.

But the thing with Joel is that he’s so funny, he’s so likeable, and he’s got such dynamism about him, but he’s also got a lot of depth as an actor. Plus he’s always inventive, and he approaches things from a very clever, very ingenious viewpoint and he never does anything ‘literally’ - which is very important to me, for his character, for the film, for the way that he’s written it. A lot of the time we’re playing things for subtext - something’s written on one level, but we’re playing it underneath that for another intention.

It was quite complex constructing performances with those two actors so we could make sure the audience was never just on the surface. We’re always dancing between the literal and the underneath, the subterraneous meeting of the story, so we could drive the narrative forward.

Also Joel has a fantastic singing voice. That’s the other thing that was really important - that he could be a musician and convincingly play a guitar, had a good singing voice and could carry the songs that were needed in the film. He had to be able to convincingly jam with local musicians because music’s quite an important component of the film; musical and creative expression was important. So he was a godsend. And I’ve always really loved Joel’s work; I’ve always had my eye on him. But I think this role has really shown him in his full dimension. I think it’s interesting seeing how he’s embraced things that perhaps other roles haven’t given him - it’s given him a chance to show his darker side as well as comedy, and his musical talent.

Let’s come to Scarlett then, her character, and why Isabel Lucas in that role?Isabel I think is just a magic, beautiful, young actress. I think she’s just absolutely

ethereal and I think it was very important for the story to have this fresh, young woman who would be a foil for Fiona in some ways - an offset or a mirror to her, but also in some ways challenge and provoke the marriage further. We go everywhere in the marriage, hopefully every edge of the marriage is explored in the film. So Isabel was the perfect choice for me because she’s just a fantastic young actress, and she’s also very likeable as well. She’s complex, and deep, and was never going to play the role two-dimensionally, which was very important to me. That she could bring humour and lightness to it and humanity as well. So I think she’s done that, absolutely. It’s been beautiful working with her.

And finally, Samrat Chakrabarti who plays the character of Krishna?It was difficult to cast Krishna because I was torn between casting someone who was

a native actor living in Calcutta or if I should go for someone else. He is from Calcutta originally, but his parents now live in America and he’s been quite successful in America. He does speak Bengali and he does have a strong connection to the city. The thing that I liked about him is that he is very versatile and he has a very earthy, strong connection to Calcutta and it gave me the permission to be able to work with him, both articulating the character,

and figuring out how to sculpt that with him, but being able to also speak with him from the perspective of being an outsider.

We’re both outsiders in some respects. Although his heritage is here and he has a viewpoint on the city which I thought was important in order to understand Krishna the character and be able to bring something to it that would be clearly defined. So it was a tough to find Krishna, but I think Samrat is an interesting choice; he’s someone who’s brought something interesting to the character and he’s also very funny without being two-dimensional. So I think he was a great choice.

How do you see Calcutta’s role in the film? How did it contribute to the journey of Ben and Fiona? Tell us about the City of Calcutta.

Well yes Calcutta is a character in the film. It’s an antagonist and a protagonist. It embraces the characters by the end of the film, but because of the differences in the two characters there’s sometimes conflicts in ideas or misconceptions about what the city is offering them or showing them. It exposes them too, particularly Fiona’s character.

From my point of view, I wanted to explore a three-dimensional view of the city and one of the things I find quite intriguing about Calcutta from a Western perspective is the strong living history of Calcutta, as well as its projection into the future. It’s a city that has both; it’s dancing between two ideas of itself in a way. There’s this strong imperialistic colonial history and there’s these beautiful buildings that are crumbling relics of a time gone. But then there’s this burgeoning new city that’s cosmopolitan and international. There’s technology and all kinds of things that are coming in to shape the city and there’s a very strong burgeoning middle class.

A lot of the film was set inside a five star hotel and we show there’s this generic, almost Western, viewpoint of the city. Initially, a bubble if you like. Then we slowly progress through different locations as they go on their journey and move towards meeting Lakshmi, their child. So we look at different aspects of Calcutta and each one is meant to be a different viewpoint of the city.

I think when you ask that question about Calcutta being a character, I think it’s important to say that the film has a poetic realism to it, so although there’s a lot of documentary techniques that are used in the film, working with non-actors, working with real locations, shooting observationally, or semi-verite, as well as formal, constructed, drama coverage, the film explores Calcutta through a poetic eye. It’s never intended to be a documentary about Calcutta. It’s a poetic viewpoint of the city, so although we are in real locations and although we are using documentary techniques with the intention of making the film as real and as authentic as possible, there is a story to be told, and it is told through a poetic viewpoint.

So Calcutta is a character - and it’s set at the time of Durga Puja (the festival celebration of the Hindu Goddess, Durga) so when the characters arrive they’re experiencing the city at a time that is very different to other times. The city is constantly alive, particularly at night. There’s all sorts of pujas being celebrated and fireworks and people are in their trucks taking their Puja down to the ghats. There’s such a lively atmosphere within the city - it’s contagious. The atmosphere within the city at that particular time of year, it was important to me, because of the thread of Durga throughout the film. I really wanted there to be a sense that the city was a character, not just because of its buildings, or the history itself, or the living history of the city, but also because of this distinct festival that was happening at that time.

And the characters view all this activity from one viewpoint at the beginning of the film, and slowly become integrated into it as the film progresses and change their viewpoint on things. So when I’m talking about that poetic viewpoint, it’s about how that intersection of

the city and all it has to offer overlaps with the journey of the characters, and how that changes them. So there’s a few distinct things about the city at that time of year that’s important.

How about shooting in the city? How did you communicate with non-actors who didn’t even understand English? That must have been a very challenging thing?

It was. But I think there is a universal language I believe, between artists particularly. Between creative people, there’s a universal language. I think that instinct and non-verbal communication is really important and I think that creativity can transcend cultural divides. I believe that. I really think this project has proven that.

But I also had strategies in place. I worked quite closely with Tanaji Dasgupta, who is a very well known, very fantastic actor in his own right, but also worked on the film as an Assistant Director. He worked closely with me in rehearsals with actors, for sequences like the airport, the Durga Puja parade, and the processions. Pretty much any time when I needed to communicate to someone who couldn’t understand me, if I needed specific direction, I always knew Tanaji would say exactly what I had asked him to say. Because sometimes things get lost in translation - and the subtleties are really important to me in making sure people, especially the non-actors, felt they had permission to do what they were good at, that they were being acknowledged and elevated and weren’t being forced into doing something they didn’t’ want to do - having someone like Tanaji on board was invaluable.

You have shown a particular style of funeral in water, which is not uniformly the most common customary way to do this. What made you do that?

Well I spoke to a number of Hindi priests about what was the most traditional way of having a funeral for a child and there were so many different viewpoints on this, I decided in the end to go with a very traditional funeral, which is to release the child back into the water. This is one example in the film of a poetic expression of reality. So it is that this has happened before, it’s not that it’s a work of fiction, but in the reality of the film that we’re creating, it works on a number of levels to have that happen for the film. It works because the water - and Fiona’s surrender to the Ganges River earlier in the film in the sequence when she travels to the rural orphanage and actually goes into the water and has an experience or encounter with God under the water - seemed to be a fitting moment to repeat that or to echo in some way by returning Lakshmi to the water. Also, the fact that Durga’s returned to the water, it just felt like a salient connection, to unify the theme of the film. And it also felt like something that was very traditional - and from the perspective of the characters they were endeavouring to make homage to Lakshmi and her background.

One of the things that was important for me in that sequence was that we see a Hindi priest, we see a Muslim doctor, and we see the Catholic nuns, all together in one place. And also these Western foreigners that are essentially godless. Well, not godless, but they don’t formally say they have a God, or any religion as such, which is very common back home in Australia. It’s more common to say you don’t believe in God then to say you do believe in God, which is definitely the opposite in India - the majority of people there would say that they believe in God, and they have a religion that they have a connection to.

It was important to me to demonstrate a pluralism of religious expression and to demonstrate different ways of doing things in a way that was quite traditional. For that couple it wasn’t important to me that it was documentary-correct, or absolutely non-fiction at that point. It was about bringing together the story, culminating it in a way that unified the themes in the story, and also making sure it had a poetic realism to it so we could feel it was unifying

this experience of many expressions, that is was breaking down cultural divides as well as religious divides, and that felt like the right thing to do.

Tell us about your relationship with producer, Jamie Hilton. How did you come across him?

Jamie’s like a brother to me. I’ve known him since the year 2000, when I’d just finished at film school. So we’ve had a long history of friendship. I’ve known him as he’s been working on his creative projects, particularly within the music video world and he’s been tracking my progress as I’ve been working through drama, and doing short films. He decided he’d like a transition to drama, to do feature films, and this was the right timing I guess. I told him about this idea which I’d had a first draft of - which was the very, very early stages of The Waiting City and he liked the idea, and connected to it, and the rest is history. We basically just worked through it together - applying for all the appropriate grants, and government funding, and tried to get the film up - and somehow we managed to get it up and made the film together.

It really is an ambitious project, considering the small budget, and coming to a different country to shoot, the different people, the crew and the strong cast. So how did you manage the co-ordination of the production?

I’ve produced quite a few things before back home and Jamie and I were co-producing the project together, which I think was useful, because we both have different skills and different areas that we’re strong at. Definitely it had helped that I had been to the city - by the time we made the film I had been to Calcutta ten times! We came together in a group with Denson Baker (the cinematographer), Jamie Hilton (producer) and myself - we travelled here and did a location scout, and met lots of local people on the ground, and did our homework. We also made a music video in Varanasi, as a bit of a litmus test for the major set pieces in the film, and to just explore what it was going to be like working with an Indian crew, and how many people we’d need to bring from back home. We didn’t want to bring many people from Australia, and eventually decided on some select people, and then it just fell into place I think. Somehow we managed to work out a balance between bringing people from home, bringing resources from home, and just using the existing resources that are here.

The Indian film industry is full of very senior creatives and technicians and I think it’s very easy to underestimate that, when you come from a country like Australia, where we also have very senior technicians. But I felt in such good hands here in India; we’ve worked with the most fantastic, amazing artists that I just could have never imagined. The calibre of the Indian team - from when we initially started working with them on the music video, then coming back, and meeting more and more people that became collaborators and then a family - we really did form a tight team. It’s been very much a blessing, having such a strong team.

How about Justine Seymour and the costumes? Tell us about this side of things.

Well Justine and I have quite a strong collaboration. We’ve worked on quite a few projects together. We’d always joke that we had the dream team - and that’s Denson (the cinematographer), Justine, Michael Yezerski the composer and I and it just managed to mean that everybody else joined the dream team! (Laughs) We just became the super dream team. Definitely Justine and myself wanted there to be an evolution with the characters. I think all the collaborators, all the heads of department, all the storytellers of the film, they bring the storytelling to their area of expertise. So Justine really shaped a story through the costumes.

She had a very subtle palette for Fiona that was quite strong shapes, quite stringent and structured clothing in the suit that she wore. In the story Fiona loses her bags, so she’s rendered powerless, and has to use an amalgam of Ben’s clothes, and some things that she buys eventually off the streets and in the shops of Calcutta. So she becomes a mishmash of ideas in the midway of the film, and then almost eventually becomes more integrated, and almost Indian in her look, by the end of the film; and the colours become a lot more rich and strong and a lot more colourful than her palette originally. Also with Ben, he embraces India quite a lot in the fabrics and in the colours - as does Isabel’s character as well. There was a lot of thought put into the costumes; a lot of plotting and scheming between the departments for that one.

And now talk about Denson Baker, the cinematographer. He’s the one who really brought The Waiting City into life isn’t he?

Denson and I have a very special collaboration, and absolutely he is my partner in crime on this film. There’s many things that are amazing about Denson’s work, but one of the things that he brings is an empathetic framing, and he brings order into chaos. He finds ways of capturing beautiful frames, that feel real, and we discussed a lot of different things to make the film have a poetic realism to it. We established different looks for the film, and we worked quite heavily together, creating visual storyboards, so we would go into our locations with stand-ins, or the actors, and a lot of the images you see behind us are remnants of our storyboards that we made (indicating behind her).

So instead of constructing sequences from drawing storyboards, we would actually go into locations and approximate the best angles and ideas for framing. And not locking us into anything before blocking it with the actors, but certainly establishing a look for the scenes as locations presented themselves to us. We also had different styles of approach to the film. So for example there were quite observational moments where the camera would be on longer lenses, further back, like a fly on the wall, particularly for sequences like the jam sequence at the cafe, the Durga procession and sequences like the wedding, where we were in real locations with real people.

And then we were in the hotel and also other locations where we had a much more formal approach, like at the city orphanage, we’d be on tracks, and we’d use subtle moments, push-ins, sometimes wider lenses, so we wanted to be much more intimate with the actors and what was happening within the story. There’s a lot of modulation and a lot of detail about the way that we worked. It’s been an incredible collaboration. I think this story is very much all of our story; in the team everyone has contributed. But the relationship between Denson and myself in particular has been so close, being able to work out ways of making it realistic, but also make it beautiful - making it epic. We always wanted the film to be big, and yet feel intimate, to not feel like we weren’t capturing things.

It was also absolutely amazing to have Mark Lapwood working with us as well on the 2nd camera. Denson and Mark are like brothers, they work together quite a lot. When Mark’s been a cinematographer, Denson’s sometimes done 2nd unit on his films, and often when Denson’s been a cinematographer, Mark has worked as a camera operator or 2nd camera on his shoots, so they have a very close relationship and are both incredible cinematographers in their own right. So having someone looking after 2nd unit who has a great eye, and is an artist in his own right, was very useful to us as well. Managing that and being able to shoot on two cameras on things was very important for us.

How did you talk about production design with Pete Baxter, because that’s very important in this film?

Definitely. The design of the film was very important, both within how the visual style of the film was brought together with Pete’s collaboration, as well as with Denson, and

Justine. Between us as a creative team, establishing the look of the film was very important. It was a very locations-based film, so Pete’s contribution was not only finding real locations, or embracing locations that I had already secured through the times that I had been to Calcutta, but it was also imbuing each location with an integrity and realism by not overdesigning things, and then at points having to create big set pieces that had to be recreated in order to establish a look for the film. So for instance when Fiona goes to the Ghat, the rural Ghat, there were quite a lot of big construction pieces that had to be organised with the horizon tank, and things like that, and also the wedding was a big one. There were quite a lot of street scenes that Pete created pretty much from scratch with the art department team.

There were quite a lot of things with creating the integrity of the look, just across the board, with ageing, with getting the hotel room to look perfect. The look and feel of it was very important. The hotel needed to feel quite sterile, in a way, like they were inside another world, an oasis or a bubble, then the exterior world we wanted that to feel a lot more anarchic, a lot more raw and real, so we did discuss a lot about that. Pete’s an amazing designer, he really pays attention to the frame, he’s always looking at the monitor, and dresses to frame, and we designed a colour palette which he was very strong about. Things like being in the rural orphanage or the city orphanage, establishing different looks for those two places, making sure they felt authentic to the Missions of Charity sisters and the Mother Teresa sisters that the film was looking at. Also, making sure they didn’t look like something out of Oliver, some two-dimensional idea of an orphanage.

They had to feel warm, and feel like places children lived in. They did lots of murals and had lots of scenic work done throughout the film to create signage, and make sure they felt like places children could live in, and feel like they weren’t oppressed. The point of the film was not to say that orphanages were bad places or anything like that. That was not our intention. But also, because there were two orphanages, to make sure they felt distinctly, clearly different in the film.

There were a lot of locations in the film, probably about 43 different locations, so Pete and his team had his work cut out for them. He also had a great, fantastic local team. Tuli and Tanmoy are very experienced designers in their own right, so the three of them together as a team was just a dream come true.

You had some very local artists in the cast, like Tanushree Shankar and Mr Khan, played by Burun Chandra, so how did you come across them and were you happy with their performance?

Absolutely! We had some very senior actors from Calcutta - Tanushree Shankar and Burun Chandra and also we had Tillotama Shome, who I guess is not local anymore, because she’s been very much taken away from Calcutta and is quite well-known overseas and also in Bombay and things like that. So we had very senior actors, and it’s quite overwhelming to have such great actors involved and people that are very accomplished come on board. I was so absolutely grateful for some fantastic performances and great actors to be able to collaborate with and who were able to also lift the energy of our Aussie actors as well. To be able to bring them together to bring the performances to new levels is really an actor’s dream and a director’s dream.

The wedding scene! It was so beautiful in this particular scene. How did you conceive the Bengali wedding?

Well definitely the film needed to finish on an uplifting, unified, note. Having been to Bengali weddings before, I just find them such a celebration and it felt like the relationship

needed to be galvanised at this point of the story. So setting it within a Bengali wedding felt like the right point in which to do that. And we did shoot this within a very semi-verite fashion. We had a community that gave us their whole area to shoot in - the centre of their village actually - and we set the tent up in the way that they would always set up a wedding tent and we approached a couple that had been married only two years before and they renewed their vows and had a Hindi priest there, that conducted the ceremony completely correct as to how it should be. Everything was authentic as it would be within a Bengali wedding.

This was also the point where Krishna invites Ben to perform a song with a Bengali wedding band. So that was quite interesting in how we were going to make that sequence work in a way that would sound authentic. So there was quite a bit of preparation involved in making sure the wedding was opulent but also very real and felt very much like a west Bengal wedding as opposed to something that felt like it was one-dimensional, or had a Western viewpoint. It feels like Fiona and Ben come into that wedding as visitors, but they’re also very welcomed. They also are invited to sit amongst the wedding party as the wedding vows are exchanged between the young couple being married, and in a thematic sense, that’s meant to be important for the story, for Fiona and Ben.

Now the shooting is over and it’s wrapped and you’re going home, how are you feeling?

Well it’s only a day after we wrapped - we finished yesterday. But it was very emotional, finishing after such a long shoot, and it’s been probably two, three hours of sleep every night, as you would, but it’s been a fantastic, amazing journey.

It’s quite emotional actually. It’s quite sad, leaving the city, and going back to Australia - I just think that we’ll all be back together soon. It’s really going to hurt, I think, leaving. It feels like a new home, and the warmth of everybody, the warmth of the Calcuttan people, the way that they’ve embraced us in the city - we’ve had no problems with anybody in our way or doing anything except supporting us - so it feels like a home and it’s going to be sad to leave. It’s been an amazing, creative journey, and a wonderful experience.

KEY CAST BIOGRAPHIESRadha Mitchell (Fiona)

Radha Mitchell recently starred in Sony Pictures Classics’, The Children of Huang Shi (also known as The Children of the Silk Road) opposite Jonathan Rhys Meyers and Chow Yun-Fat as well as Henry Poole is Here for director Mark Pellington. Prior to this she starred in the Lakeshore Entertainment romantic comedy Feast of Love, alongside Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear. Mitchell has also been seen in numerous films such as the lead role in Silent Hill, with Sean Bean, Finding Neverland starring opposite Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet and Dustin Hoffman, Man on Fire with Denzel Washington, the innovative feature film, Phone Booth, opposite Colin Farrell, and Pitch Black starring Vin Diesel.

Mitchell will next be seen in Surrogates opposite Bruce Willis, to be released in late 2009. She will then be seen in The Crazies in early 2010.

Other recent film credits include When Strangers Appear with Josh Lucas, the independent feature Dead Heat opposite Keifer Sutherland and Anthony LaPaglia, Woody Allen’s Melinda and Melinda, Nobody’s Baby with Gary Oldman and Skeet Ulrich, Rodrigo Garcia's Ten Tiny Love Stories and Mozart and the Whale opposite Josh Hartnett. On television, she starred with Hank Azaria and Donald Sutherland in NBC's critically acclaimed mini-series, Uprising, for director Jon Avnet. Mitchell gave a memorable performance as Syd, the young editorial assistant who falls in love with Ally Sheedy's heroin-addicted photographer character in Lisa Cholodenko's critically acclaimed drama High Art. Her role in Emma-Kate Croghan's romantic comedy Love and other Catastrophes was highly praised at both the Cannes and Sundance film festivals.

Originally hailing from Australia, Radha currently resides in Santa Monica, CA.

Joel Edgerton (Ben)Joel Edgerton is a renowned Australian actor whose career over the past fifteen years

has covered theatre, television and film.Joel became a household name in Australia through the internationally successful

television series The Secret Life of Us, for which he won the AFI Award for best actor in a Leading Role in a Television Drama in 2002.

Since then he has garnered over 40 film credits as an actor, including prominent roles in King Arthur, Kinky Boots, Star Wars II and III, Smokin' Aces, Ned Kelly, Open Window, The Night we Called it a Day, The Hard Word, Praise, $9.99, and Acolytes.

Joel also stars in two films soon to be released: Separation City and the Lions Gate picture for 2010 - Warrior, where he stars alongside Nick Nolte and Tom Hardy.

Joel’s extensive theatre resume will be put to the test later this year when he plays the role of Stanley opposite Cate Blanchett in A Streetcar Named Desire. Helmed by Liv Ullman, the production travels to New York in late 2009. Among his numerous stage credits are Henry IV, and Henry V for The Bell Shakespeare Company and most recently a production of The Pillowman for the Melbourne Theatre Company.

Joel’s work behind the camera started with the founding of Bluetongue films back in 1996, with his brother Nash and fellow actor/director/writer Kieran Darcy-Smith. Joel has directed for the stage, and recently wrote and directed the short film The List. In 2007 he co-wrote/co-produced and acted in the critically successful The Square directed by Nash - the film is set for theatrical release in the US late in 2009.

Isabel Lucas (Scarlett)Isabel Lucas first came to the attention of Australian audiences playing the role of

‘Tasha’ in Home and Away from 2003 to 2006. In 2004 she won the TV Week Logie for ‘Best New Female Talent’.

Recently seen in the 2009 world-wide blockbuster, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with Shia LaBeouf and soon to be seen in Daybreakers with Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill, William Dafoe and Claudia Karvan, in which she plays Sam Neill’s daughter. Daybreakers, is scheduled for theatrical release in 2010.

Lucas filmed her role in the feature film, The Waiting City on location in India during December 2008, with the film scheduled for an early 2010 release also.

Lucas will next be seen on television in The Pacific, HBO Films’ epic ten-hour miniseries event telling the story of US marines in the pacific theatre of World War II. The Pacific is executive produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman, the creative team behind the Emmy-winning 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Five-time Emmy Tim Van Patten is directing Episode One which was recently shot in Far North Queensland and Melbourne. Lucas plays the role of Gwen who is the love interest for Private Sid Phillips (Ashton Holmes). They meet in Melbourne when the Marines are on leave there. The Pacific is scheduled to debut on HBO and Channel Seven in 2009.

Lucas began her career in acting after being ‘spotted’ by agent, Sharron Meissner of Meissner Management, under a mango tree at the Port Douglas Markets. At the time, Lucas was studying drama and singing while completing her high School Certificate.

Lucas, whose mother is Swiss and father Australian, is blessed with diversity in lifestyle having already lived in Melbourne, Kakadu National Park and Switzerland. She is also fluent in Swiss.

An active supporter of charity organisations including OzQuest and the Whaleman Foundation, Isabel recently returned from Japan where she participated in a traditional surfing paddle-out ceremony to honour the memory of the thousands of dolphins killed each year at the notorious killing cove in Taiji Japan. In 2006 she went to Namibia to be involved in volunteer community work for two months, after signing up with Ozquest: Young Australian Adventures.

Lucas is currently based in Los Angeles, USA.

Samrat Chakrabarti (Krishna)Samrat Chakrabarti holds an MFA in Acting from the ART/MXAT Program at

Harvard University.His film credits include: Claire McCarthy's The Waiting City (with Radha Mitchell),

Bruce Leddy's The Wedding Weekend (with Molly Shannon), Manish Acharya's Loins of Punjab of Presents (with Shabana Azmi), Spike Lee's She Hate Me, Leonardo Ricagni's Indocumentados, Joseph Castelo's The War Within (nominated for INDIE SPIRIT AWARD), Anjaan Dutt's The Bong Connection (with Victor Banerjee), Ajay Naidu's Ashes, Sarba Das's Karma Calling, Amyn Kaderali's Kissing Cousins, Shailja Gupta's It's All been Arranged, Joseph Matthews's Bombay Summer (with Tanishtha Chatterjee) and Suman Ghosh's Dwando (with Soumitro Chatterjee).

He has had several guest stars and recurring roles on television, such as: Law and Order (NBC), The Sopranos (HBO), Love Monkey (CBS), Damages (FX), All My Children (ABC) and Hope and Faith(ABC).

Samrat is also an established international musician and has won numerous awards for his music, including: a US CARA for Best Original Pop/Rock Song, for his composition, What's It all About.

INTERVIEW WITH RADHA MITCHELL (Fiona)So Radha tell me a little about THE WAITING CITY?

THE WAITING CITY is a story of a couple that come to India and rediscover themselves and their relationship and find a point of maturity in their communication that they otherwise didn’t have access to. So it’s kind of like an emotional coming of age story.

What attracted you to the film?What attracted me to this movie was India itself. I’ve wanted to make a movie in

India for ten years I think. I came here when I was 19 and I had an idea for a film at that point - which never happened. But it’s always just been on my mind, something that I’ve wanted to do. I was googling myself on the Internet late one evening and I read this article about ‘Radha Mitchell’s going to make this movie called THE WAITING CITY in India’ and I’d never heard of it but it was immediately exciting to me because I wanted to make a move in India, and it was an Australian production. Then I discovered more about the script in talking to my agent and the director Clare McCarthy and the producer Jamie Hilton and we all had a really great meeting in LA and there was a sense that we should be doing this together. There was some kind of serendipity to it. But what also attracted me to the script was that it’s basically an acting piece, we’re two actors - Joel and I - we’re in every scene, and the nuances of our performance define the story. So it’s a really interesting challenge for any actor. In many ways it’s a dream project - we get to go to India, have an adventure, and we get to act.

Talk to me a little bit about the character of Fiona and her relationship with Ben.

Fiona Simmons is an interesting, really fascinating character. She struggles with the city. They arrive in Calcutta and it’s just more than she had counted on - the whole experience from the beginning is challenging. Her identity is constantly challenged by the experiences they’re presented with. Primarily they’re here to adopt this baby which becomes this elusive character we never meet ‘til the end of the story and waiting for her puts a lot of pressure on the relationship which is already at this tenuous point. It seems like the couple have come to India to create the perfect family in adopting this baby, because they’re having trouble conceiving by themselves. But she comes to India and is confronted by the challenges of that experience, and also by the city of Calcutta itself, and throughout the story, is transformed.

I think the relationship between Fiona and Ben is very interesting, specifically because it’s so modern. You have a woman who’s basically the breadwinner in the union, and the guy who’s the artistic, flow character. They’ve developed a rhythm that has been sort of functional but they’re both a little dissatisfied; and this sense of what a man is and what a woman is they have to question in themselves then come to terms with as a couple - and you see them do that in the story.

What about the relationship between Fiona and Krishna?The relationship between Fiona and Krishna is interesting, specifically because the

characters explore and transgress their class roles. Krishna is the bellboy and Fiona is the hotel guest. There’s certain awkwardness in there, particularly for Krishna because he is in these exchanges with this weird woman who can’t have a baby but wants one, and he doesn’t know what he thinks about that. She feels a little bit judged by him, but ultimately what they

misunderstand about each other becomes a point of self reflection and they learn from each other and develop this sweet friendship.

Talk to me a little bit about working with Claire McCarthy.It’s been an amazing experience working with Claire. She seems to thrive in chaos,

which is great, because there’s been so much chaos to deal with every day. I’m in awe of the fact that she would go through the paces of the day, with all of the challenges we’d encounter and be very calm the whole time. She’s also very flexible. We had a script which was good, it was something we could all rely on and refer to, and yet there’s moments in the story where we’d not abandon the script, but leave the script and come back to it. There’s a sense of spontaneity and flow, and she’s a wonderful guide to all of that, for all of the actors. And just so ballsy to even have the idea to come to Calcutta and shoot in the train station, and shoot in the street, take over the airport - some people would say that is insane, but we did it, and we did it with her leading this thing.

I think this piece is so original and my experience of it is pretty specific. I don’t think I’ve ever worked with people that are not actors in a city like this, with this many extras, so it’s just an unusual circumstance, and I was just really impressed that she handled it with such grace. I can see her in the future doing whatever she wants, because she has that kind of poise.

There’s a lot of religious themes in the film. Can you touch on the religious themes in the film and what they mean to you, and what they mean to Fiona?

I think it’s really great to talk about religion and faith in a direct way, because it’s one of those subjects that people don’t really know how to deal with in the movies, or don’t even want to deal with in conversation, because it’s kind of uncomfortable. So for me it’s an interesting thing to explore, and for Fiona, she’s agnostic, or she’s a non-believer, at the point where the story begins, primarily because she lost her mother, and in this experience of losing her mother, had this experience that there was nothing - this sense that death is void. I think the pain of that has tinted her view of things in general. But there are other things - things that she would consider mistakes that she’s made, in her mature life, that have also shaded her point of view.

And somehow in coming here she starts to feel connected to her mother, who is dead, and she also is taken - maybe not taken by religion - by this concept of Durga, who is certainly an inspiration in the story. But she’s inspired by it, and without being able to explain it, has this sense of connection to this goddess, that is surprising to her and changes her way of looking at the world.

You’ve kind of already touched on this, but after working on so many Hollywood films, can you sum up the experience on working on such a small Aussie film?

Every project is different and everything has whatever it has, but what was really special about this movie was everybody was doing it because they wanted to be here. And they really believed in the story and they weren’t being paid any money, but they really gave their blood. It’s unusual to come across a project like that.

What were the Indian crew like?The Australians and the Indians worked together quite easily, I thought. Maybe it’s

because everybody speaks English, kind of. And maybe it’s because there’s this culture of

filmmaking which is really part of India already, so everybody’s very experienced. What I was really impressed by, especially with the Indian crew, was that they could just change hats, and somebody who’s an actor could also be an AD, could also help in wardrobe, everybody could do everything. There’s this real team effort, especially the AD department. They were just like full power, hard core, all day long. Most of them were under 25 so they were just like full on. I think without that energy, without that enthusiasm, without that drive, we would have never been able to make the film. So the Indian crew brought a lot to this project. They were kind of the juice for the whole thing.

Do you want to talk about what happened in Mumbai and how that affected the shoot here in Calcutta? (Note: The Mumbai Attacks on 26 November 2008, occurred during the shooting of THE WAITING CITY)

What happened in Mumbai gave us a sense of uncertainty. Our parents who were all going to visit no longer wanted to visit, and so on. I think more personally it affected members of the crew who live in Mumbai, or Bombay, whatever you want to call it. I think it’s just reflective of our times, it’s something we, as a global community, have to come to terms with, hopefully in a non-violent way.

But this was one of those typical movies where nothing’s going to stop it. There could be a hurricane and we’d keep shooting. Plus we were in Calcutta, where it was not taking place, and there was this sense of insulation in the project, that we were doing this, and weren’t going to get too involved with the media hype and what was going on there, which was obviously dramatic and not nice.

Can you talk to me a bit about the wedding scene?The wedding scene is the culmination of everything that has happened in the story.

This couple has come to India to adopt a baby and then they suffer this tragic experience where the baby they’ve been waiting for so long dies, and they’re forced to process that at the same time as processing the idea that maybe they shouldn’t even be together to start with. I think they realise they should be together and they should be together from the best part of themselves, not from the immature, hurt, painful parts; and the wedding I guess is an expression of that. In a way, it’s somebody else’s wedding, but it kind of feels like their wedding.

Finally, there’s lots of kids in the film. Lots and lots of kids! Did you enjoy working with them?

Did I enjoy working with kids? It was I think the second day of shooting, in this little, I think it was a boy’s home, and I think it was my birthday on that day, and this teenage boy, quite young, came up and gave me this little necklace. It was just a really beautiful, sweet, exchange, because I don’t know how he knew it was my birthday specifically and he was just this youth, who obviously didn’t have access to a lot of things. It was really a beautiful moment, for me. Then the next scene we were in this room with twenty sleepy babies and they were all like little angels. Again it was like wow, it’s so amazing, having these little sleeping babies on set; it really is kind of magical, and everyone’s walking around whispering. It was magical.

INTERVIEW WITH JOEL EDGERTON (Ben)Tell me about the story of THE WAITING CITY

The story of The Waiting City is the story of Ben and Fiona, a youngish married couple, who are coming to India to receive their child that they’ve been waiting for, for almost two years. On the surface the story is about a couple coming to collect their child, their adopted child, but deeper than that the story is about their relationship, and the spaces and the cracks in that relationship. The problems in their relationship are illuminated through the experiences that they have in India and they kind of go from a place that’s relatively good, through some problems, to a space that’s relatively better in their relationship.

So what attracted you to the film?Always with a film, the script is always the first thing that lures me into a project. So

definitely the story and the script that Claire’s written, was something that definitely lured me in. It was very dramatic and emotional and at the same time had a real light touch to it. The other thing that lured me was the idea of going to shoot in India, because as an Australian, most things you tend to shoot are in Australia, or if you’re lucky in the States, and usually English-speaking countries. So going to somewhere relatively different and exotic like India is to me definitely a lure. I’d never been here before, so I was kind of really excited about that aspect of it.

Tell us about your character, Ben?Ben is essentially one half of a couple in the film, but as a person he’s a musician,

that’s his job. But his career is somewhat duller than he would have hoped for; he’s essentially engineering other people’s music rather than creating his own. We look at the idea that he was a one-time star, on his way to being a star, but has since fallen off that trajectory. As a person, he’s a guy my age, who’s married and waiting to adopt a child and I think psychologically he’s hoping that the child is going to fix a lot of things in his life that he’s not happy with.

When we meet him in the story we realise that he’s financially dependent on Fiona, who’s got a high-powered legal job. He’s dependable on some kind of anti-depressants, so his health isn’t great, his finances aren’t great, his career’s not great, in a way he’s got not much to smile about. But as a person he’s a very optimistic person, and perhaps that’s a little bit of false optimism at times, or hopeful optimism, but he’s generally a pretty easygoing guy. But he’s a disappointment to Fiona at times, who sees Ben as someone without much responsibility. Maybe he has gotten used to the fact that he’s dependent on her and that makes his life pretty easygoing - he doesn’t have to keep receipts and he doesn’t have to keep schedules and stuff. So he’s a very interesting character.

And a lot of aspects of him I can relate to. It’s very interesting to play a character who’s embarking on this thing, adopting a child, starting a family from scratch, through adoption and what that throws up or must throw up for a person. It’s quite interesting and hopefully the film does a good job of conveying that.

We touched on this a little bit, but if you could talk to me a little bit about the relationship between Ben and Fiona (played by Radha Mitchell).

The relationship between Ben and Fiona is really at the heart of the film; it’s the thread of the film that runs through it. It seems like they’ve got a good relationship but what I

find interesting about it is it’s not a film about a couple that are meeting each other and falling in love, but it is a film about a falling in love story. When you meet them, their relationship is quite good, but throughout the story, you kind of see the issues that they have with each other. I guess going on holiday - and coming to India for them is something of a holiday, in that you get kind of smashed together with your partner for an intense period of time, where you’re spending 24 hours a day together - raises a few cohabiting issues. So you start to see the problems between the two of them, and realise their relationship is not all fantastic.

And by putting themselves under the microscope, or the intense situation that they’re in, the pressure of waiting for the child, and what that throws up, it really starts to jostle the status quo of their relationship and you start to fear for them a little more than you would have thought. Through the story of the film, those things almost tear them apart, but I think the great thing about the film is that they go through that and they find a place at the end that makes their relationship a better thing then it was in the beginning.

Talk to me about the character of Krishna (played by Samrat Chakrabarti) and your relationship with him?

Krishna, he’s an Indian guy, who when we meet in the beginning, is our guide. Ben and Fiona have a fairly middle class standing with their lifestyle, so they can afford to stay in a nice hotel, and they want to put on a nice front for the adoption agency. And part of the thing with the hotel is that they get this guide, Krishna - and he’s really just a guy who works at the hotel but he really wants to go that extra mile and show them around. He starts to get involved in their lives more than they expect, and he starts to form a separate relationship with Fiona and a separate relationship with Ben and becomes by the end of the film a friend to both of them. By a twist of fate he comes from the same place Lakshmi - the child they’re adopting - is from and offers to take them there; and from that experience the friendship really galvanises.

But he also along the way throws up a few interesting points of view, that really help shake up the relationship between Ben and Fiona and the most important one of those is really whether Fiona is meant to be a mother. This idea that if you are a barren woman, if you can’t give birth, that perhaps that’s a sign from God, or a sign from the universe, that you’re not meant to be a mother. That really affects her, but at the same time, makes her really think about it. So he plays a very crucial role in the film.

Talk to me about Scarlett and your relationship with Scarlett (played by Isabel Lucas).

The other particularly significant relationship for Ben is the relationship with Scarlett, who kind of stumbles upon Ben and Fiona at a temple they’re visiting and recognises Ben from his music. So they’ve met before and she’s this young, optimistic, wild musician travelling through India; an Australian girl, who then also intervenes in Ben and Fiona’s life, kind of by her free nature, her spirit. She’s somewhat opportunistic, but really wild and free. Ben and her end up tinkering with a bit of music together. Ben’s writing a song for his soon to be adopted child and Scarlett suggests some ideas and through that they end up forming this song, which is a song that Ben’s writing but really is formed by both of them.

The significant thing Scarlett does in the film is remind Ben that he has got a creative spirit within him. I think that part of him feels a little bit dead and he feel it’s a bit in the past. She kind of revitalises him and reminds him of that, just through a gentle nature. So there’s kind of a grey area of romance between the two of them, but it’s really mismatched. But really I think her significance is really what she reminds him of creatively.

What was it like working with Claire McCarthy?I had a really good time. Shooting a film is always a really difficult thing, and

particularly the thing that you want to nail down as soon as possible is the right communication between an actor and a director. I think for a start, Claire was so passionate about this film. The moment I met her, I realised how interested and how hardworking she was going to be. I really take my hat off to Claire for even dreaming this up, and going through and making it happen. She’s incredibly thorough, she’s a very intelligent girl; and I think that she’s made something special, just because of how much heart she’s put into it.

What I’ll also say about Claire is that the ambition of this project speaks for her skill and commitment, but also speaks for a wonderful, wide-eyed optimism she has, which comes from a pinch of naivety and a pinch of dreaming, and a pinch of being new in a way, being young and all that. She might have never tried to bite off this thing if she felt cynical or jaded. She’s really forward, on her toes, optimistic; and I really admire that. I’ve got a lot of respect for her and it’s just grown as we’ve been making the film.

Talk to me about your experience of filming in India.My short answer to the question ‘what was it like filming in India?’ was it was just

awesome. I gotta say that before I arrived, I was a little bit nervous, I didn’t know what to expect, obviously I was totally willing to come here, but nervous in a good way. But then when I arrived, the first week, I had a few experiences, that my initial response was, this is fantastic! Wow, this is going to be crazy. Then there was a couple of experiences early on that made me feel like, wow, you’ve got to brace yourself and you start to accumulate what kind of stamina you’re going to need to get through the shoot.

It’s been chaotic, but it’s been an incredibly special experience. I love being in this city, I love the way you can turn in any direction and open your eyes and see something fascinating. I love the people, I love how interested and approachable and approaching they are. All the people in the crew, I’m really going to miss them, I just had a really special time. I kind of knew I was going to have a special time. I didn’t know what shape it was going to take, but I think I was going to regret it if I didn’t come and I know now that if I hadn’t have come I would have missed out on a lot of really great memories in my life.

Talk to me about the wedding scenes. What it was like?I experienced absolute anxiety about the fact that my character has to sing a song at

the wedding, kind of dobbed in or forced up by Krishna. So I have to say that during the shooting of the wedding scene, half of my brain was freaking out because I’m not a proper musician, and I’d never sung in front of a crowd of people before. But you see it in the film, Indian weddings are - there’s so much colour and so much noise, and so much stuff, flower petals, and bride and groom being lifted up on platforms by their friends... There’s a certain sense of festivity and fun to it. I hate to say it, but most weddings I’ve been to are so restricted in a way. You almost feel like you’re not allowed to laugh at a wedding, because you feel like it’s insulting or something. There’s this sense of great chaos at a wedding in India.

Ben’s a musician, so there’s a lot of music in the film. Can you talk about the song, Only Love is Real.

Only Love Is Real is a song that Ben composes, with a bit of help from Scarlett, dedicated to Lakshmi. We see it pieced together throughout the film and we see it in its full form after they’ve lost Lakshmi; and Ben plays it to Fiona at the wedding so it becomes

somewhat symbolic of the two of them coming back together and speaks of love in general and love of family.

The song Only Love Is Real is played by Ben in the film, but it’s composed in real life by the Khan Brothers, singing that I heard a few weeks before I came to India. It’s a really beautiful song, it’s really simple, and I often think that that is the best kind of music. It’s very sweet and it’s very naive in lots of ways as well. It always struck me that you can almost sum up part of this film by that idea of simplicity and getting back to what’s real, and looking at what you really love. The song to me was really, kind of, perfect for the film, and fits into the film really well.

Talk to me about the street life, and working with all the non-actors, the beggar women, or just working with the people on the street here.

Well Claire had a particular idea that certain scenes in the film needed to be done Verite, or just breathe real life into the film - hide a camera here and there, or just hire people whose job it is to do the job of the character in the film. So Fiona goes into a chemist, so why not get a real pharmacist, in a real pharmacy store, have him just play out the way he would. At the airport you’ll see Fiona interacting with an airport official, he’s a real guy who’s an airport official. That really helps too; it speeds up a lot of things and can get a really fantastic performance out of people. The closer your people are to the characters you’re playing, it just brings a great authenticity to the film. So it was great that Claire did that.

Do you want to talk about the Mumbai Attacks?One of the things I’ll always remember about this film was right in the centre of the

shoot; it was literally almost right in the middle, when the attack started at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai. It really kind of threw a lot of things in the air with the shoot. For a start, everyone was incredibly sad about it, but I think also very nervous, particularly a lot of the Australian crew who were here and suddenly didn’t know how level the ground was in Calcutta. At the same time, a number of our crew was from Bombay, and a lot of the crew, suddenly, certainly understandably, didn’t have their minds on the film we were making. We were fiction. It was a really delicate time, because also the attacks were ongoing for a period of days. It affected everybody, in an interesting way it reminds you that you’re just making a film, making fiction. And such an intense example of real life, tragic real life, is going on. It was quite difficult, and very difficult for a lot of members of the crew, and difficult for a lot of the Australian members of the crew, who didn’t really know how to behave or didn’t really know what to think or what to say, or how to relate to what was going on.

KEY CREW BIOGRAPHIESClaire McCarthy (Director)

Sydney based writer, director, producer and visual artist, Claire McCarthy has been making internationally acclaimed short films and documentaries for over a decade.

A directing graduate of the Australian Film TV and Radio School (2001) Claire also holds a Bachelor of Design / Communications (Hons) from the University of Technology, Sydney (1994-1997).

Claire has written, directed and produced a number of documentaries, films and music videos in Australia, India, Germany and Mexico including Little Hands (2009), Skin (2006), The Find (2006), City Edge (2005), Starbaby (2002), Panopticon (2001), Square Space (2000) and Tinsel (1999) and her films have screened at many international festivals including Montreal, New York, Palm Springs, Flickerfest, St Kilda and London.

Her first feature film Cross Life premiered at the Sydney Film Festival (2007) and the Pusan International Film Festival in Korea (2007) and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award at the 2007 IF Awards. Her Young Filmmakers Fund (NSW Film TV Office) documentary film Sisters in Calcutta was broadcast on ABC television in February 2008.

Her feature film, THE WAITING CITY, is expected for national Australian release in early 2010.

Jamie Hilton (Producer)Managing Director of production companies Hilton Media Pty Ltd and Ticket to Ride,

Jamie Hilton has produced films, music videos, television commercials and new media projects for many of Australia’s established and up and coming filmmakers.

In the last eighteen months Jamie has produced the AFI nominated short Boys Own Story for writer/director Michael Petroni (Till Human Voices Wake Us), Valladolid winner Don’t Say A Word for director/DOP Mark Bliss and FTO funded short Hero, directed by Adrian Van De Velde. In the same period, he has produced over 60 music videos for Australia’s premiere artists in partnership with Sony BMG, Warner Music, EMI/Capitol and Universal as well as a host of commercial campaigns for Clemmenger BBDO and Belgiovane Williams Mackay.

Jamie Hilton has produced work for directors Michael Petroni, Keir McFarlane, Joseph Kahn, Clare McCarthy, David Rechtman, Michael Spiccia, James Hackett and Adrian Van de Velde.

His films have screened and won awards at festivals all over the world including Toronto IFF, New York IFF, Rome IFF, Paris IFF, London IFF and Palm Springs IFF.

This past year Jamie has finished the post-production on his first feature film project THE WAITING CITY (due for cinema release 2010) with writer/director Claire McCarthy and The Australian Film Commission and Isabella with Adrian Van De Velde. He has also optioned Karin Boye’s dystopic Swedish Cult-Classic novel Kallocain and is adapting it for the screen.

Denson Baker (Cinematographer)Denson Baker ACS is a graduate of the Australian Film Television & Radio School

where he was the Cinematographer of the year in 1999.In 2002 Denson won the AFI Award for Best Cinematography in a Non-Feature and

has worked internationally shooting in Europe, India, Korea, New Zealand, The Pacific and throughout Australia. He has shot films that have won awards and screened in most major

international film festivals including Sundance, Cannes, Tribeca, Clermont-Ferrand, Flickerfest, Berlin, LA, among others.

Denson’s recent cinematography credits include The Black Balloon, winner of the Crystal Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, Steve Pasvolsky’s feature film Deck Dogz and Daniel Askil’s internationally acclaimed short film We Have Decided Not to Die as well as recent music videos for Old Man River, Jimmy Barnes, The Presets, Cut Copy and Paul Mac.

Veronika Jenet ASE (Editor)Veronika Jenet came to Australia from Germany and it was here that she first began

filming and editing on Super 8 mm whilst travelling around Australia.Veronika is a highly regarded and awarded feature film editor having worked with

many of Australia’s leading directors such as Jane Campion (with whom she collaborated on five films) and Phil Noyce on THE RABBIT PROOF FENCE. She has also contributed to the careers of a number of emerging feature directors including Jan Sardi with LOVE’S BROTHER, Elissa Down with THE BLACK BALLOON, Rachel Ward with BEAUTIFUL KATE and Claire McCarthy with THE WAITING CITY.

Veronika is the editor of THE PIANO, for which she received an OSCAR, BAFTA, and ACE nominations and she has been nominated for AFI awards five times and has won three times for THE PIANO, the documentary HEPZIBAH and THE BLACK BALLOON. Veronika has also been nominated for two IF awards and has won for RABBIT PROOF FENCE.

Veronika Jenet is a member of the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was an inaugural recipient of the Australian Screen Editors ASE accreditation. In 2007 she was awarded an ASE award for the television mini-series BASTARD BOYS. She has also been an advisor for the NSWFTO’s Aurora script workshop.

Veronika is also a co-director and producer with the exciting Sydney based production company Decade Films.

While Veronika comes from a fanatical soccer family she is currently learning to appreciate the finer points of Australian Rules football!

Pete Baxter (Production Designer)Pete Baxter has worked on projects of varying scope, scale and sensibility. Recent

work includes a series of collaborations with Ivan Sen, culminating in the award winning Beneath Clouds; and conceiving the many and varied worlds in The Umbilical Brothers’ Upside Down Show (Logie winner for Best Children’s Show). He was designer for Michael James Rowland’s award-winning Lucky Miles and recently re-created 1920’s Sydney in the period feature The Tender Hook, starring Rose Byrne and Hugo Weaving.

Bringing a lively and imaginative approach, he draws on both his fine arts and construction expertise and places strong emphasis on broad conceptual ideas in developing ideas and the finer textual details of implementing them.

Pete was born in New Zealand and moved to Sydney to complete a degree in Visual Arts (Sculpture) at Sydney College of Arts in 1990. He later consolidated his skills and experience at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) where he studied Production Design. When not working on feature films, Pete works with some of Australia’s top directors on television commercials.

Michael Yezerski (Composer)Michael Yezerski is one of Australia’s premier young composers. His screen credits

include The Black Balloon, Newcastle, Kenny, Suburban Mayhem and Cross Life.

Michael received The Barbara Blackman Commission from the Australian Chamber Orchestra to write a forty-minute work which will be the centrepiece for their 2008 concert season.

He has written for some of Australia’s finest musicians including violinist Richard Tognetti, Oud virtuoso Joseph Tawadros and Synergy Percussion. His many awards include gold at the 2006 Park City International Film Music Festivals (USA), the Inaugural APRA Professional Development Award, Best Classical Artist at the 2004 MusicOz Awards, APRA-AGSC Australian Screen Music Awards and the inaugural AFTRS Critics Circle Music Prize.

Justine Seymour (Costume Design)A passion for textures and fabric started Justine Seymour on a career path of costume

design in the mid eighties, which saw her undertake projects for theatre, television, performance art, video clips, dance and film. She consolidated her experience and education by attaining a Master of Arts in Design from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) in 2001.

Justine has designed four feature length films and 24 short films and recently joined forces with the Sydney Dance Company for their project The Director’s Cut performed at the Sydney Opera House. Having worked on The Eye Inside with Cordelia Beresford, Justine added the 2006 Dendy Award to the accolades received by the numerous films for which she has designed the costumes.

Nikki Barrett (Casting Director)Nikki Barrett recently cast Baz Luhrmann’s Australia and is one of Australia’s most

experienced casting directors.A small selection of her screen credits include: Clubland; Kokoda; Candy; The

Proposition; The Illustrated Family Doctor; Jewboy; Somersault; The Black Balloon; The Rage in Placid Lake; The Night We Call it A day; Soft Fruit and Babe: Pig in the City.

THE WAITING CITYFULL CREDITS

CASTFiona RADHA MITCHELL

Ben JOEL EDGERTONKrishna SAMRAT CHAKRABARTIScarlet ISABEL LUCAS

Sister Tesilla TILLOTAMA SHOMEDoctor Khan BARUN CHANDASister Agnes DANA ROY

Uncle TAMAL RAY CHOWDHURYDidi Chatterjee TANUSHREE SHANKAR

Urmi PAULOMI GHOSHPharmacist KAYLAN CHATTERJEE

Airport Official KAMALENDU BANERJEECarlisle JEREMY SIMS

Feroz SHANKAR HALDARBlind Man SOUMITRA SAHA

Samson SAYEED SAMSEER ALIParty Dancer SCOTT BENDALL

Raj DATTA BABUThe Rabbit SAYAREE DUTTA

Durga SAHIRA BIBIKrishna’s Baby NEELU MANNA

Rashda SHELLY SANYALSharmilla SOMA DASLakshmi SANCHITA SAHA

Lakshmi Double DEEYA SENGUPTADeeta BIBA BISWAS

Hindu Priest AMALENDU CHATTERJEEHindu Temple Guide RAJA BISWAS

Ankila BEJOYA PAINRashda’s Husband AMAR MUKHERJEE

Krishna’s Son SUROJIT MALAKARBlind Boy ARONYO MITRA

Singer on the Train BASU DEB BAULPip ANNA BROADBENT

Scarlett’s Band JOHN BOSEAVINASH CHORDIATANAJI DASGUPTAANASUYA SENGUPTASAPTARSHI BHATTARJEECLAIRE TONNAONERIO NETORACHEL WOODSCOTT BENDALLRICHARD STORRS

Pageant Children LIGHTHOUSE FOR THE BLINDCHETLA KRISHTI SANGSADGARDEN HIGH SCHOOL

Radha Mitchell Stand In MOUSHMI CHAKRABORTYJoel Edgerton Stand In SHIEKH RIZWAN

MUKTI (CHAARI CHAARI)Written by Maddan Dutta, Sarangan

and Michael YezerskiPerformed by Sarangan and Ankita

SachdevProduced by Michael Yezerski

© Sandcastle Music Publishing / Control 2009

(p) Waiting City Films 2009

PANTEY TALIWritten by Jeet Ganguly

Performed by Joel Edgerton & The Kids© Shree Venkatesh Films Pvt Ltd

Film: Chirodini Tumi Je Amar

BEAUTY OF LIFEWritten by Amanda Baker and Luke

BournePerformed by Isabel Lucas and Joel

EdgertonPublishing Courtesy of Demanda

Records

SHAPE UPWritten and Performed by Oli Chang,

Ebony Fleur and Amber Joy© Copyright Control 2009

(p) Oli Chang, Ebony Fleur and Amber Joy 2009

PREM DIROHOMusic Traditional

Lyrics by Basu Deb Das Baul.Performed by Ruhaniyat featuring Basu

Deb Baul© Copyright Control

(p) Waiting City Films 2009

THE LITTLE RABBIT WHO SAVED THE WORLD

Written by Ranajay Gupta and Katy Lai Roy

Performed by Orphanage Kids© Ranajay Gupta and Katy Lai Roy

(p) Waiting City Films 2009

AMRA SOBAI RAJAMusic and Lyrics by Rabindranath

TagorePerformed by Orphanage Kids

(p) Waiting City Films

AVE MARIATraditional

AUGUNE POROSH MUNIMusic and Lyrics by Rabindranath

TagorePerformed by Aronyo Mitra(p) Waiting City Films 2009

EK DIN BHAUBE ELEN MOHAMMED

TraditionalPerformed by Ruhaniyat featuring

Gholam FakirProduced by Michael Yezerski(p) Waiting City Films 2009

RAAG BHUPALIWritten and Performed by Hindol

© Copyright Control 2008(p) Waiting City Films 2009

ONLY LOVE IS REALWritten by Edo and Nadav Kahn

Performed by Joel Edgerton and Hindol© Shakit Music

EKLA CHOLE REMusic Traditional

Lyrics by Rabindranath TagorePerformed by Ruhaniyat

Produced by Michael Yezerski(p) Waiting City Films 2009

THIS LOVEWritten & Performed Julia Stone© Sony/ATV Music Publishing

AUSTRALASIAN DISTRIBUTION BY

THE WAITING CITY WAS FILMED ENTIRELY ON LOCATION IN KOLKATA, INDIA

PRODUCED BY WAITING CITY FILMS PTY LTDFOR SEE PICTURES AND SOL FILMS

PRINCIPAL INVESTOR

PRODUCED IN ASSOCIATION WITH THENEW SOUTH WALES FILM AND TELEVISION OFFICE

PRODUCED IN ASSOCIATION WITHSPECTRUM FILMS and EFILM

© 2009 Screen Australia, Waiting City Films Pty Ltd, Spectrum Films Pty Limited, Radha Mitchell and the New South Wales Film and Television Office.

Screen InternationalThe Waiting CityReview by David D’arcyAn Australian couple seeking to heal what’s wrong in their lives by adopting a child

in India run head-on into a stolid bureaucracy in The Waiting City, Claire McCarthy’s second feature which is a tender look at loss and self-knowledge.

A poignant, perceptive tale of one couple’s effort to have a child to give their lives meaning, The Waiting City can draw on a sizeable Australian audience (the story is based on a number of Australian adoption experiences in India), and with noted Indian actor Samrat Chakrabarti playing the couple’s hotel guide and driver, this could also do well in the Indian market.

In McCarthy’s own script, Fiona, an irritably ambitious corporate lawyer (Radha Mitchell), arrives in Kolkata with Ben, her failed singer/guitarist husband (Joel Edgerton). With their luggage lost, their strained relationship frays afresh as agency clerks announce new delays to see the child whom they have waited two years to adopt. The appearance of a pretty musician friend (Isabel Lucas) from Ben’s past compounds the stress.

Culture shock becomes culture clash as their bemused guide, Krishna (Chakrabarti), offers an Indian’s frank and unwelcome reflections on adopting a child from another culture. Fiona and Ben quarrel and part company before finally reaching the baby’s orphanage. The daughter whom they are to adopt, little Lakshmi, is adorable, but gravely ill. In attending to the child’s suffering, the two reconcile, although worse news is yet to come.

In The Waiting City, McCarthy finds a balance between lampooning local annoyances and probing the real motivations of would-be parents longing for a child.

As Fiona and Ben, Mitchell and Edgerton are so convincing as self-involved adults stumbling into a huge responsibility (and a foreign labyrinth) that McCarthy needs no exegetical scenes about problems inherent in the adoption process. Mitchell rings true as a ballsy lawyer, fused to her computer, negotiating deals as she prepares to be a mother. Edgerton oozes with the vulnerability and frustrated anger of the weaker half of their partnership.

Playing Krishna as a young father beset with his own stresses, Chakrabarti brings an agility to the film’s encounter of two cultures, particularly regarding raising children. Parents thinking about adopting a foreign child might do well to take look at The Waiting City.

That colourful crowded city is not over-exoticised by McCarthy. With DP Denson Baker, the director has shaped her film to begin with those unsettling aspects of a noisy metropolis that first strike visitors, and then shift gently into a gradual revelation of sounds and images, most of them intimate, that come with a longer stay. By the time Fiona and Ben adopt a country, McCarthy makes sure you see and feel why.

The Hollywood ReporterThe Waiting City - ReviewBy Kirk HoneycuttTORONTO - The journey looks like an overly familiar one as "The Waiting City"

begins. Westerners confronting, then being rejuvenated by the mysterious East is by now a cliché. Yet Sydney-based writer-director Claire McCarthy proves too smart to fall into that trap. She appreciates and, even better, understands the power Indian spiritualism can have on foreigners, and so has made a persuasive, intimate account of a couple's encounter with the subcontinent.

Radha Mitchell and Joel Edgerton play a 30-something Australian couple, who comes to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) to claim an adopted daughter, Lakshmi. Red tape delays things so they are forced to wait in this exotic and often trying city.

The wife, a lawyer, juggles her mobile phone and laptop so that it's like she never left the office. The husband is a musician so with an adventurous spirit and guitar in hand he makes friends easily in the city. His running into a pretty fellow musician (Isabel Lucas) causes displeasure in his wife, the first notable crack in the happy-couple facade.

Kolkata with its frustrations, alien customs and thousands of gods put the couple's relationship to a test. Long-ignored resentments, hidden feelings and one very bad secret bubble to the surface.

Mother India herself seems to challenge the newcomers. A hotel worker (Samrat Chakrabarti), who befriends them, doesn't even disguise his concern about a white couple adopting an Indian child or about the wife's lack of religious faith. A clear-headed nun (Tilotamma Shome) demonstrates her love for the child is equal to theirs.

A trip to their daughter's hometown and a first encounter with Lakshmi herself puts further stress on their stability. Are they even suitable as a couple, much less parents?

When one is surrounded by gods and devotion, Western dismissal seems shallow. In Kolkata, a filthy river is holy and a Catholic orphanage thinks nothing of closing to celebrate a Moslem holiday. The culture is steeped in belief. When life hangs in the balance in this place, unbelief is no help.

The film is not without its touristic elements. The director and her cinematographer, Denson Baker, aren't going to pass up the opportunity to show the glories and the muck of this ancient city. Bureaucracy, lost luggage, destitute beggars, upset bowels and a snake assail the visitors.

Yet McCarthy is not about to fetishise poverty or celebrate the exotic. India offers the couple a different way to look at everything. It invigorates them. Their former life has become the dream and the intense experience of India is now the reality.

It comes as no surprise to learn that McCarthy has worked in orphanages and the slums of India so hers is both an insider and an outsider's viewpoint. This attitude informs every frame of this fascinating drama, a welcome addition to the new Australian cinema.