Emile Sherman (Australia)

Nomination Detail

Winner, FIAPF Award, Outstanding Achievement in Film, 2014

One of the most highly renowned and prolific producers working in the Australian film industry today, Emile Sherman is a dynamic local producer with a truly international outlook, known for producing both films that tell compelling Australian stories and international co-productions that explore Australia’s connection with the rest of the world.

Two of his earlier such productions are the Australian independent feature Candy (2006), starring Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish, nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and Disgrace, the adaptation of the acclaimed South African novel by Australian based author J.M. Coetzee, which won of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival. Emile produced the first ever Australian/Israeli co-production, $9.99 (2008), a stop motion animation set in a Sydney apartment building, and the documentary Uncle Chatzkel (2000), the story of an Australian filmmaker and his uncle in Lithuania who survived the Russian Revolution.

In 2008, Sherman combined forces with British producer Iain Canning to create the international production company See-Saw Films. One of their first productions, The King’s Speech (2010), catapulted Emile onto the world stage when he became only the second Australian producer ever to win the Best Feature Film Academy Award®. An international co-production starring Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth, the film won over 100 awards internationally, including 4 Oscars, a Golden Globe® and 7 BAFTAs.

Throughout his career, Emile has shown a talent for choosing incredible true stories about normal people who achieve remarkable things, and for realising these stories on screen to their full cinematic potential. These films include the child migrant story Oranges and Sunshine, the epic desert adventure Tracks and the upcoming Indian Australian journey Lion.

Demonstrating a quality shared by the world’s most respected producers, Emile Sherman supports the careers of new and upcoming talent, including the now Oscar® winning directors Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech, Les Miserables) and Steve McQueen (See-Saw’s Shame, 12 Years a Slave). Sherman’s upcoming projects include director Justin Kurzel’s second feature, Macbeth, and the feature film debuts of both Garth Davis (Top of the Lake), who will direct Lion, and John Maclean, writer/director of New Zealand shot western, Slow West.

For television, Sherman produced the six part series Top of The Lake from writer/director Jane Campion, an international co-production and a groundbreaking series for the medium, which was the first television series ever to be screened at the Sundance Film Festival. Capturing spectacular New Zealand landscapes, this tense rural drama won a Golden Globe® for actress Elizabeth Moss and a Prime Time Emmy for Australian cinematographer Adam Arkapaw.

Emile further contributes to and supports the growth of the local industry through Fulcrum Media, a local film and television finance company founded in 2008 by See-Saw Films together with Sharon Menzies and Barry Sechos. Fulcrum Media has already provided finance to more than 80 local productions including Lore, The Turning, Shopping and The Railway Man.

In only a short period of time, producer Emile Sherman has created a diverse and acclaimed body of work that has had an enormous impact on the industry both in Australia, and around the world. Not only is it with great pleasure that FIAPF honours this young and dynamic producer with the 2014 APSA FIAPF Award but it is with great delight that we await his future contributions to cinema in the region and beyond.