Bruce Beresford: Trump tariffs a ‘loony move’ for global film industry

The Australian director says he is bemused at Donald Trump’s move to ban US moviemakers from foreign investment and foreign locations.

Filmmaker Bruce Beresford. Picture: John Feder

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After making feature films around the world for more than 50 years, Bruce Beresford is more bemused than alarmed about Donald Trump’s intervention in the ­global, free-market world of movie production.

From London, where he’s on holiday, the 84-year-old filmmaker says the US President’s bid to impose 100 per cent tariffs on films produced outside America sounds like “another loony move by an insane President” who doesn’t understand that “films are so international”.

Beresford has made 33 feature-length films, with the most recent, The Travellers, starring Bryan Brown and Luke Bracey, to be released in October.

He worries the Trump tariffs, if imposed, would turn the clock back to the 1970s and a movie industry focused on Australian locations and Australian money.

Beresford’s long list of films include Australian classics like The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972), Don’s Party (1976) and Breaker Morant (1980) as well as Hollywood movies like Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and Tender Mercies (1983) and more recent films like Ladies in Black (2018) and Mao’s Last Dancer (2009).

He has become expert over the years in piecing together finance from many backers and his struggle, for example, to get backing for Ladies in Black, set in Sydney in the 1950s, is well known.

“So many films are made with American investment,” Beresford says. “The one I’ve just done had investment from Sony – films are so international. Trump thinks American filmmakers are rushing overseas to take advantage of government schemes and investment schemes, but if they don’t get those investments, they can’t make the movies.

“They say to themselves, will it cost, say, $250m? We’ll put up $175m and get the rest from the subsidy in Australia. The alternative is often not making the film.

“They get subsidies in England, they get them in Europe, they get them in Italy, in France. Film­making is incredibly costly. Does Trump imagine he could set up a scheme in USA which would eliminate the need for foreign investment and foreign locations?”

Beresford wrote the script for The Travellers during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Filmed in Western Australia, it tells of an expat who comes back home from Europe to see his dying mother in a small country town.

Beresford says while Trump seems motivated by the notion that Hollywood is not as powerful as it was and that people have lost jobs, there are many reason why production has dropped there.

“One of the reasons has to be the sheer cost of a lot of those films. (Filmmakers) look around, they think, we’ll put up a lot of money, but we can’t put up all the money, right? So we’ll get a subsidy somewhere,” he says.

“Trump seems to think that you can only make these things in Hollywood. That’s not correct. I have made films in countries all over the world; no matter where you’re working, the crews, they’re all much the same. They’re always very capable people from all over the place.

“That’s another reason that you don’t want to make everything in Hollywood – people want to use different settings and locations, which you can do now much more easily. “Years ago, you really had to make films in studios because it had a great advantages for the sound.”

After decades in the business, Beresford is not slowing down and is looking at several scripts, although he has learnt patience: “So many projects fall over.”