A film that received funding of €550,000 from the Irish Film Board has been on hold since November 2009 after a dispute among its producers.
La Mula (The Mule), a Spanish, British and Irish co-production, stopped in the final week of production when a British director, Michael Radford, claimed that contractual agreements had not been finalised. Radford, who was Oscar-nominated for Il Postino, was also a co-producer through Workhorse Entertainment. His company had won a pledge of more than £1m (€1.23m) in production funding from the UK Film Council.
The Irish production company Subotica had a commitment of €550,000 from the film board. There was also an expected net benefit to the production of €350,000 raised through Section 481 tax breaks.
Workhorse Entertainment went into liquidation in November. The British Film Institute, which took over the film council’s funding commitment, said it was “continuing to support Radford in his attempts to seek a satisfactory resolution of the matter”. This is believed to include keeping the promise of funding in place for one year.
The Irish Film Board denied that it was unusual for a film originated and filmed outside Ireland, without Irish story elements and not using Irish technicians or actors, to be approved for funding.
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A spokeswoman said it had received an application in October 2008 from Subotica “for the funding of a European feature film. While all the shooting was to take place in Spain, all post-production, including visual effects, was to be carried out in Ireland”.
Much of this work was to have been done at Windmill Lane post-production facility in Dublin, owned by James Morris, who is chairman of the film board. Meanwhile, a principal of Subotica, Tristan Lynch, is a member of the IFB board. The spokeswoman said: “The board has a strict conflict-of-interest policy. No member of the board who has an interest in a project takes part in any discussions of and decisions in relation to that project.
“This policy was applied to Tristan Lynch and to James Morris to the extent that the project had any involvement with Windmill Lane as a post-production house.”