Best known for Filth (2013), Stan and Ollie (2018) and Tetris (2023), Jon S. Baird is a BAFTA-winning director, writer and producer who has worked on prestige film and TV projects with Martin Scorsese, Mick Jagger, Terence Winter, Danny Boyle, Jim Carrey, and many others. He is in Malta this week serving as head of the jury at Mediterrane Film Festival.
How is Malta treating you? Have you been here before?
“First time in Malta, but it’s a very special place for me because my father did his National Service in the navy and was stationed in Malta during the Suez Canal crisis. He always talked about Malta and he’s got a lot of friends here. So when they offered me the chance to see it for the first time and be a part of the festival, I was like, definitely! Because he passed away, like, 20 years ago.”
Are there any of his old friends you can look up while you are here?
“There’s one guy, actually. My dad was a friend of Alex Ferguson, and when he left Aberdeen and went to Manchester United, there was a Maltese contingent here who used to come over to the games. There is a guy called Joe, he still lives here, so I’m going to try and look him up. My father came over to his daughter’s wedding and all that stuff.”
How is jury duty going at the Mediterrane Film Festival?
“It’s a real eclectic mix. Some incredibly talented people with CVs that are really intimidating. But we bonded pretty quickly. We’ve seen movies from Turkey, Tunisia, the UK, Gibraltar, France… we’ve got more to see with more variety. There were couple I’ve seen, which at the time I wasn’t sure about, but looking back they made an imprint on me with very sophisticated symbolism, which I don’t have in my films at all. To a point where you have got to work hard to understand what is going on here. But being introduced to cultures in countries from where you don’t usually watch the movies, seeing what’s important to them and what they respond to, it’s quite humbling. It’s also educational.”
Do you learn stuff as a director from immersing yourself in a broader global mix of films?
“100%. I think you’re always… I mean, borrowing. Stealing, basically.
Talent borrows, genius steals.
“There you go. Ha! But yeah, even sometimes on a subconscious level that you are not aware of until maybe a few years later. It definitely imprints on you.”
What can you tell us about your next feature, Everything’s Going to be Great?
“We shot it end of last year in Canada, and it was a brilliant experience. It was with Bryan Cranston, Alison Janney, Chris Cooper. It’s a lower budget film, a real sort of heartwarming family drama. Something like little Miss Sunshine. Coming of age, dysfunctional family, set in the 1980s in rural America. It’s a family who have a traveling regional theatre and they’re trying to make it big, but things don’t go to plan. It’s about how they recover from that. So hopefully will be coming out later this year.”
You shot Filth in your native Scotland and also, very impressively, made contemporary Scotland look like Cold War Moscow in Tetris. To what degree do you consider yourself a specifically Scottish film-maker?
“I’ve shot in Scotland a couple of times, done some post up there. I’m very proud of being Scottish, even though we just got completely humiliated during the Euros. Ha! But I would never say I was a Scottish director. I would say I try and do more international stories, human stories. I’ve lived in England 28 years, longer than I lived in Scotland. But I still talk to my mom and sister every day, hence my accent.”
From your Malta experience so far, can you imagine shooting a film here in future?
“Yeah, I love it! Particularly Valletta is beautiful, I haven’t seen enough of the island yet. Hopefully at the end of the week, we’re gonna go and see the rest of the island. But with just how beautiful this place is and how friendly everybody is – and as I say, my connection, or my father’s connection. I’ve only been here three or four days, but I feel as though there’s something here, something telling me that I’ve got to work here at some point.”
