‘I, Daniel Blake’ Producer Rebecca O’Brien Says UK Indie Film Sector Will “Die” Without “Additional Fiscal Support”
deadline.com“There’s market failure because the streamers came in, high-end TV got higher end, and Hollywood arrived. And they took a lot of our investors away,” Sixteen Films producer Rebecca O’Brien concluded when quizzed on the state of the UK indie film sector during an appearance at the UK’s British Film & High-End TV Inquiry.
She added: “Some additional fiscal support for the sector is essential. I think we could really die without it.” O’Brien appeared in front of the bipartisan committee this morning, where she discussed her decades-long experience producing features with Ken Loach, navigating the independent market of international co-productions and financing, and what must change for the UK indie industry to push forward.
The session began with O’Brien being asked how she and her team at Sixteen Films have managed to successfully produce and land distribution for the films of the company’s founder, Ken Loach. “When we made I, Daniel Blake, for instance, we didn’t know that it would be successful in Japan.
We thought we were making a little film set in the northeast, which was telling stories about certain parts of the community at that time,” she said. “We wanted to make it because we thought it was an important story to tell.
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