Tribeca / Newport Beach Film Festival 2019 – The Shipment
The epic intergalactic tale The Shipment tells the story of a widowed cargo hauler who finds himself stranded with his daughter on a wretched spaceport after their old ship breaks down. Faced with an unscrupulous offer to escape, he faces a difficult dilemma that puts his morality to the ultimate test as he tries to provide a better life for his family.
Interview with Writer/Director/Executive Producer/Animator Bobby Bala and Producers Ana Maria Carrizales and Arun Fryer,
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
BOBBY: One day while parked at a gas station, I saw a burly truck driver and his young daughter getting fuel for their large 18-wheeler. I wondered if he was a single dad and I imagined how a similar scenario would play out if he was a poor cargo hauler in space traveling from planet to planet with his daughter.
Many years later, when I decided to pursue filmmaking, I thought it would be amazing if I could make my first film with my daughter Ishana who was about 10 years old at the time. With the idea of the space trucker concept still in my mind, I started writing the script and I imagined Ishana in the role of the daughter. I had a small window of time before she became too mature to play the role.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
ANA: How far are you willing to go to protect your family, and what if the only way to do so is morally questionable? I think most people can relate to that hard moral dilemma. The action unravels in a breathtaking universe, that it will equally compel and inspire you.
ARUN: I don’t know of any other independent short films that have attempted the scale of our production, especially in Canada. The Shipment is one of those experiences where anything is a possible - new worlds, languages and species. The film immerses the audience in a different universe, showing them places and creatures we would never otherwise see.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
BOBBY: The migration of people and border crossings are urgent issues right now, important to me. There are people crossing borders for survival and there are people working as human smugglers. Their lives are complicated and often subjected to negative stereotypes. The protagonist of this film is in the moral dilemma of transporting alien slaves in order to save his daughter. He is a flawed but noble character who is driven by the desire to protect his family and serve the greater good. His story needs to be told because it challenges the idea that human migration is a clear-cut issue. Right or wrong is not always easy to define.
Assuming there is intelligent life on other worlds, it is a universal concept that good people sometimes do bad things for the greater good of providing for and protecting their families.
Also, I want to get the audience thinking that the problems and challenges that we humans experience here on earth are probably somewhat similar to what intelligent alien beings experience on other worlds. They probably deal with extremes such as war and peace, love and hate, wealth and poverty.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
ANA: Bobby had a solid idea about the story from the start. What changed over time was the scope of the project. The universe became richer and layered, and the characters, especially Kaidan, became more complex and therefore, more relatable.
ARUN: Bobby originally pitched me the idea of a shorter film no longer than ten minutes and much different (i.e. smaller) in size and scale, but as the story became more complex and elaborate, the script and production kept growing. Although the film was always centered around the father-daughter relationship, Bobby had a clear vision of creating a world that felt lived in and inhabited for a long time. The original Star Wars trilogy was a huge influence for us.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
ANA: The feedback has surpassed all my expectations. It has been received with so much love and enthusiasm from press and audience alike. One of the most beautiful comments we’ve been hearing from sci-fi die-hard fans is that they are truly compelled by the story - even without the wonderful VFX, they say they would love our film!
ARUN: So far we’ve been blessed with a lot of great reviews, especially during the screenings at the Tribeca film festival, and I think that’s a testament to Bobby’s determination to make the best film possible. He’s a perfectionist and the results are clear on the screen. We’ve won several awards at various festivals, including best VFX, cinematography, music and acting, and we even won Best of Fest at the Irvine film festival in California. So far this run has been an amazing honour.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
ANA: It confirms what we always knew, that authentic, strong storytelling is everything. All other elements are secondary.
ARUN: After working on The Shipment for five years, it’s easy to lose track of what makes the film special, especially after watching it so many times during post-production. What’s been refreshing is screening with an audience, it’s like seeing it again for the first time, and after reading the nice reviews, they’ve reminded me why we started in the first place. Filmmaking is full of ups and downs, and in the independent world, it’s usually more down than up, so the feedback has given us a renewed sense of joy and passion.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
ANA: We’d like the film to reach the biggest audience possible, beyond the limited number of festival runs. The reviews we’re receiving from media outlets increase our chances to catch the interest of an interesting platform that has the potential to reach millions of fans.
ARUN: In my opinion, a film without an audience is rather pointless, and in today’s crowded mediasphere, we are grateful for the attention that helps us find an audience. We made The Shipment so others would enjoy watching a family-based story in a galaxy far away. I grew up wanting to be Han Solo, and maybe someone will grow up wanting to be Kaidan Katar.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
ARUN & ANA: We’d love to continue our festival run and show it to as many people as possible. The eventual home will, of course, be online, streaming somewhere like Vimeo or on iTunes, but this is a film that’s meant to be seen on the big screen. We’re also still waiting for a premiere in our home country of Canada. We don’t have a sales agent or distributor yet, but we’ve been approached by a few already, and I’m sure we’ll find a good partner to help get the film out to a global audience hungry for these types of stories and cinematic experiences.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
ANA: I would like Disney +, Netflix or big studio to be interested in developing a show. Bobby has an out-of-the-park vision to expand The Shipment’s universe, and we would love to see that happen.
ARUN: I hope the audience will remember the story of a father and daughter struggling together to make a better life for themselves. We’ve heard it’s a story that could be told in several different types of genres; ours just happens to be science-fiction. Ideally, parents with children will enjoy watching the film together, and being a new father, nothing would make me happier.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
ANA: In times of escalating polarization and quick judgement, I’d like the audience to ask: What would they do if faced with excruciating decisions day-in and day-out to just to get by, like many millions of hard-working parents around the world? What is the destiny of the migrants who cross the borders and what is the role that the smugglers play in determining their fate?
ARUN: Most films like The Shipment are produced by larger studios with deep pockets and bigger resources. The question we asked ourselves several times during production is: can a group of independent filmmakers come together and create something that can compete with budgets much larger than ours?
Would you like to add anything else?
ANA: I’d like to ask the audience to check our film credits. They will find the names of a gang of an incredibly talented cast and crew. Led by Bobby’s stunning vision, they made magic.
ARUN: Thank you for this opportunity We Are Moving Stories to talk about our film and the amazing cast and crew who made it all happen. Filmmaking is the ultimate collaborative art form, and we were lucky to work with an awesome collection of talented and passionate independent creators. It doesn’t get better than that.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
BOBBY: There has been some interest from various groups wanting to turn this film into a feature and/or a TV series but nothing finalized yet. For now, I’m just enjoying some downtime before jumping into the next project. I have some ideas in mind which I’ll be developing soon. The next few months will be interesting for sure.
Interview: May 2019
We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series, music video, women's films, LGBTQIA+, POC, First Nations, scifi, supernatural, horror, world cinema. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
The Shipment
The epic intergalactic tale The Shipment tells the story of a widowed cargo hauler who finds himself stranded with his daughter on a wretched spaceport after their old ship breaks down. Faced with an unscrupulous offer to escape, he faces a difficult dilemma that puts his morality to the ultimate test as he tries to provide a better life for his family.
Length: 27:30
Director: Bobby Bala
Producer: Ana Carrizales & Arun Fryer
Writer: Bobby Bala
About the writer, director and producer:
With over 15 years of experience as a Visual FX artist and 3D animator, BOBBY BALA, an Indian-Canadian filmmaker, decided to apply these skills into making a film with his young daughter Ishana. The film is called The Shipment, which took him 4 years to complete and he had to even invest over $1 million dollars out of his own pockets to finish it. The epic intergalactic short has had a successful reception so far after being selected at various festivals such as Tribeca, Fantasporo, Bermuda, Miami, Sarasota, Berlin Sci-Fi, to name a few. The film has also garnered numerous awards such as Best of Fest, Best Child Actor (Ishana Bala) and Best Foreign Featurette at the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema in California. Bobby Bala resides in Vancouver, BC with his family where he runs his company Elite HTS, a manufacturer of high-end custom home cinema seating. He is currently working on the TV adaptation of The Shipment.
ANA CARRIZALES is a Peruvian-Canadian filmmaker & producer. Ana has written, produced and directed several short films and documentaries and is currently co-directing a new feature documentary set in the Amazonian jungle titled School of Shamans. She was a awarded an NBC-Universal Screenwriting Scholarship and graduated with honours. She sits on the boards of Documentary Organization of Canada (BC Chapter) and Vancouver Latin American Film Festival and is a Vancouver Film School producing Instructor. Her latest documentary production, The Day Don Died, screening soon at Hot Docs (2019) played in Whistler Film Festival 2018, Northwest Filmmakers Film Festival and Vancouver Short Film Festival). She also wrote, directed and starred in Media Luna which is premiering at the Vancouver Women In Film & TV Film Festival (2019).
ARUN FRYER is an award-winning filmmaker and media producer from Vancouver, Canada. Arun produced the indie feature thriller Cadence and directed the documentary short Before She’s Gone. He also received the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Artist in Film & Media, served for two years on the Board of Directors for DOC BC, and recently completed a TEDxTalk based on his experience with Before She’s Gone. Arun is presently an instructor at Vancouver Film School and is developing a feature documentary titled School of Shamans about a family from Ecuadorian amazon fighting to protect their land from resource exploitation. He is the 2019 Artist in Resident for the Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth.
Key cast: Aleks Paunovic (Kaidan Katar), Ishana Bala (Zohra Katar), Robert Maillet (Rotik), Omari Newton (Etienne),
Looking for: distributors, journalists, buyers, sales agents
Facebook: The Shipment
Twitter: @theshipmentfilm
Instagram: @theshipmentfilm
Hashtags used: #TheShipmentFilm
Other: IMDb
Funders: Self-Funded (+$1MM dollars)
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month? Tribeca (New York, NY, USA); Newport Beach Film Festival (Newport Beach, CA, USA); London Sci-Fi Film Festival (London, UK); and many many more.