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| Shree Ram Dahal and Tejuswee Ram Dahal in The Boat |
Last month, Jordan became the first country affected by leprosy this century to completely eliminate the disease. It has tormented humanity for around 4,000 years, and although it’s now easy to cure with antibiotics, it lingers on in places where that isn’t well known or people don’t have access to them. Brothers Luke Morgan and Jake Morgan’s Oscar-qualifying film The Boat is set in Nepal and follows a father as he realises that his beloved daughter is exhibiting symptoms of leprosy – a discovery which forces him to make a painful decision.
“A couple of years ago, Jake and I were doing some contract work with the Mission to End Leprosy, which is a charity headquartered here in Ireland, in Dublin,” Luke told me when we met up to discuss the film. “Its CEO is a man by the name of Ken Gibson, and he was telling us about this heartbreaking true story about a girl that he met early on in his journey in spreading leprosy awareness, called Dhuckia. Dhuckia had contracted leprosy and was left at the foot of a hospital in Nepal by her father. Her father told her that he would return the next day to get her. He never returned, and she never saw him again.
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| Tejuswee Ram Dahal in The Boat |
“When Ken met Dhuckia, she was older and she had been treated and cured of leprosy, so there is a kind of a happy end of the story. But it put him in mind of the agonizing conflict and choice that he had to make, this father, in order to sacrifice one of his kids, basically to save the others. Because of the stigma that unfortunately still exists around leprosy in parts of the world that are quite remote, where it's seen as a curse more than a treatable medical condition. But leprosy is the oldest known communicable disease in the world.
“When we heard this story, we decided to apply our skill set of emotional narrative filmmaking to trying to bring this to life on screen, in order to appeal to people's hearts rather than their heads... We wrote the screenplay and we sent it to Ken and he said ‘Let's try and make this happen.’ The rest is history.”
It’s clear from the film that there is some understanding of leprosy as a communicable disease, I note, but that seems intertwined with notions of a curse.
“We only really kind of became aware of the stigma when were in Nepal ourselves,” says Luke. “It is the case, and has been the case historically, that if people do start showing the symptoms of leprosy, they're just effectively exiled from their community.”
“People think that it's passed by touch, or being anywhere near them,” says Jake..
Luke nods. “So there's a fear of like coming into contact with these people at all. That's why essentially at the heart of film is the theme of touch, because that's the common misconception that exists. And that's, to be honest, how we perceived leprosy. We learned more about leprosy over the course of making the film.”
“It’s why, in the poster image that we have, it's the father and daughter and they’re both reaching out to touch each other and they're too far away to actually connect,” says Jake. “We feel like that was the message in the image, that they want touch and they want to embrace but they can’t because of the curse.”
“I think touch is such a primal or visceral thing that exists between humans,” says Luke. “Especially humans. And the most heart wrenching scenes in the film, in my opinion, are the ones where touch is denied.”
“My favourite part of it is when Dhuckia’s father, Raoul, decides to abandon his fears and he just gives in to his parental instincts to hold his daughter,” says Jake. “He might be sacrificing his own life, for all he knew, but he did it anyway because of his love for his daughter.”
They are an actual father and daughter, he explains.
“We viewed many talented actors in pairs over Zoom,” says Luke. “Our line producers in Nepal, Dinesh and Manood, had found these fantastic actors, but we weren't really sure that we had found our Raoul and Dhuckia, so we asked them to keep searching . They gave us a call up one day and said they had a real life father and daughter. Shree [Ram Dahal] is quite a well known actor and director actually in Nepal, but his daughter Teju was only eight or nine at the time and she had never really appeared on screen other than just for an ad. And so we saw them together and we just knew straight away.”
“It was added bonus that they had the connection there already,” says Jake. “They were comfortable acting with each other and they had such a sweet relationship both on and off the screen.”
The film is, first and foremost, about speaking to people’s hearts, says Luke.
“Part of it is, hopefully, to spread awareness in those countries that it's not a curse,” Jake adds. “To educate them to look into it further and learn that it's not a curse and it's not very communicable really. You have to be exposed for six months and you have to have the genes to actually contract leprosy in the first place. We just hoped it would be a good tool or device to just educate people and let them know there's a cure in those regions that they might not know.”
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| Shree Ram Dahal in The Boat |
“Unfortunately, the bottom line is, today, money equals solution a lot of the time,” says Luke. “I don't want to speak for the Mission to End Leprosy as a charity, but this is now a very powerful tool in spreading awareness and raising funds for their eradication program. The clue’s in the title with the charity and they have a plan to eradicate leprosy.”
We talk about the importance of connecting with Western audiences in order to finance such work, and a scene in which Dhuckia and her sisters roast marshmallows over a fire, which is something people can relate to in lots of different places. Luke brings up a point that he recalls someone else making recently, in response to the film.
“They were like, ‘You know, when you see people on Facebook posting about cancer fundraisers and diseases that we would find quite common here in the Western world, it's usually because people have some sort of personal connection to those diseases.’ Like somebody they know has contracted cancer, and that's the motivation to get involved. Whereas nobody in the Western world has any real frame of reference whatsoever for leprosy. Because although it did exist here – Ireland, for instance, has a long history with leprosy – it's now completely eradicated here in Ireland.
“When they see this, they see that not only does it still exist, but also that young girls can get it, even in the modern day. And given how cheap it is to treat and how widely available the cure is...” He shakes his head. “So yeah, the marshmallow scene is important in that sense. It's little things like that really help make the bridge between a Western audience and something that is unfortunately very relevant in places like Nepal and India today.”
It was difficult to find marshmallows there, though, Jake notes.
At the other end of the scale, there’s a scene where father and daughter meet a man suffering from leprosy in the road..
“It's a very garish part of the film, which unfortunately, I do think is necessary and which does contribute to the power of the film,” says Luke. “It had a very real human consequence, in that we needed to cast somebody with actual leprosy. We needed to get the consent of somebody with actual leprosy to take part in the film, and we needed them to understand the vision so that we weren’t exploiting them or using them in an unfair way. Luckily we had very strong links with the Anandaman Hospital in Nepal. Their leprosy mission are quite closely aligned with the Mission to End Leprosy, so we had a lot of contacts there.
“We went into the hospital and we spoke to this man who took part in the film. And through a translator, we made sure that he understood exactly what was going on and he was able to give his consent and he understood. Given that he was in treatment and he was in remission, he agreed to take part. I do think it is one of those kind of scenes that is a little – not crude, but it's quite stark. But without the physical manifestation and representation of the disease at a later stage of its journey through somebody's body, it would have been very difficult to communicate the stakes of what was going to happen had she continued not to get treatment.”
Shocking though this imagery will be to many, the film as a whole looks beautiful, and it’s very well made. How did they manage that in a country which has very little film industry of its own?
“Getting the equipment there was the hardest part,” says Jake. “Most of our suitcases were packed with the gear. The camera and the lights and some of that stuff we got over there because we had line producers on the ground who had some equipment and had a bit of experience as well. And the Nepalese are very friendly and welcoming to foreign film crews.”
This is because of Everest, Luke explains.
“We were originally supposed to shoot it in India, but it was very difficult to get the necessary visas to actually film there. So we ended up going to Nepal, which was where Dhuckia’s story took place in the beginning. We were a small crew and we had about six people from Ireland that we brought over, including myself and Jake, and then we had between six and eight Nepali support crew. And the equipment, as Jake said, was all just about fitting what we could fit into our suitcases with one flight.
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| Shree Ram Dahal in The Boat |
“A lot of the production value of the film comes down to the beauty of Nepal itself, but that's not to discredit the prowess and skill of the cinematographer and the production designer, who were able to work with what they had and use the natural environment to further embellish their contribution to the film creatively.”
“We built in a bit of tourism time before the shoot,” says Jake. “We were going to be in Nepal to do some location scouting, to get costumes organised to meet the cast and do some camera tests and also to adjust our stomachs to the food and stuff, because that was one of our worries going over there, that we would just get sick once we started.”
“That's because the Irish stomach is weak, not Nepalese food standards,” stresses Luke. “Irish stomachs are weak, for sure.”
“That first week was pretty important in getting ourselves ready for the shoot,” Jake continues. “And then once we were shooting, it was great, apart from one scene that we had to reschedule three times because of the weather. For the most part, it went pretty smoothly.”
“The weather was very unpredictable, and actually, that was something we didn't expect,” says Luke. “We tried to avoid monsoon season, but weren't entirely successful. We're well used to the rain here in the west of Ireland, but that rain was off the charts, and there were thunderstorms and everything, so it was crazy.”
When most people think of Nepal, I suggest, they think of snowy Himalayan peaks, but there are lots of different striking landscapes there. This film shows us something very different.
“Nepal is such a beautiful country, says Luke. “And my gosh – a lot of the time we were just pulling up on the side of the road. We were like, ‘Stop the van! Stop the van!’ And then Dinesh, our line producer, would hop the fence and asked the landowner for permission. Could we shoot there? And they were all just so laid back and chilled, and they were like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ So it really was a case of having the time beforehand to really scout out the locations. That was so important because the locations are so stunning and they're such a massive part of what makes the cinematography work so well.”
“One challenge we did face was with the sound,” says Jake, “because over in Nepal they have these insects called cicadas that are really loud. They flock in these trees and they just scream for, like, hours. That was something we couldn't avoid. We just had to try and mic everybody closely and then figure it out in post. But when I first heard them. I was like, ‘What's that noise? Is there an electrical line that's fizzing or something?’”
So how do they feel now, with the attention that the film has got and with it being Oscar qualified?
“It's incredible.” says Luke. “We were very demoralised about the film at the start because it kept getting rejected from film festivals. And we didn't understand why, because we were so proud of it and we put so much work into it. And then all of a sudden, our fortune changed very quickly and we won the Best Short Film Grand Prix in Cork. We won Best Irish Film in Foyle Film Festival in Derry. Within the course of a week, we won those two awards, and then everything changed. Other film festivals fell like dominos.”
“The film has now been all over the world, and we're in a fabulous position,” says Jake. “We're qualified for short film Oscar consideration. You know, fingers crossed, in December we'll be on a short list.”
“It's such a numbers game, and it really just comes down to how many eyeballs in the Academy you can get the film in front of at this point,” says Luke. So look, let's see what happens. But it certainly would be absolutely incredible to have the platform of an Oscar shortlisting or an Oscar nomination.”
