Behind the Production of STILLWATER from Academy Award-winning filmmaker Tom McCarthy

From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Tom McCarthy (Spotlight) comes a drama about family, forgiveness and unconditional love.

Bill Baker (Academy Award-winner Matt Damon) is an unemployed oil rig roughneck from Oklahoma who has lived a hard life marred by drug and alcohol abuse.  Intent on making up for his past mistakes Bill makes periodic trips to Marseille, France, to visit his estranged daughter Allison (Academy Award-nominee Abigail Breslin), who is serving a nine-year prison sentence for the murder of her girlfriend, Lena, a crime she insists she did not commit.

Allison seizes on a new tip that could exonerate her and presses Bill to engage their lawyer.  But when their lawyer rebuffs them, Bill takes matters into his own hands and makes it his personal mission to find the real culprit – a man Allison has identified as Akim.  Confronted with language barriers and cultural differences, Bill is outmatched until he strikes up an unlikely friendship with French theater actress Virginie (Camille Cottin) and her young daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud).

As he combs the streets of Marseille searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack, Bill finds himself on an unexpected path, growing ever closer to Virginie and Maya.  It’s a journey of self-discovery and liberation from a life  that long seemed preordained.  Yet when his need to prove his daughter’s innocence collides with his commitment to Virginie and Maya, Bill is left with only difficult choices that only threaten to destroy his new life, but also his last shot at redemption.

Writer-director Tom McCarthy was one of the many people who found himself fascinated by the details of the 2007 Amanda Knox case, an American student living in Italy, who was arrested and charged with the murder of her roommate.  She was convicted and sentenced to a lengthy prison term even though she maintained her innocence.  Coupling this case with his interest in the literary genre of Mediterranean Noir, he teamed with writer, Marcus Hinchey and began to write an original screenplay set in Marseille.

STILLWATER was shot on location in Marseille, France, and locations in and surrounding Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in August and September of 2019.  To achieved the look and feel McCarthy envisioned for the film, he collaborated hand-in-hand with cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, production designer Philip Messina and costume designer Karen Muller-Serreau.  “Stillwater is flat with a lot of space and stillness,”  McCarthy says.  “In contrast, Marseille is incredibly vibrant.  Part of the reason I love Marseille is the light – there’s a reason the south of France has attracted painters for centuries.  We wanted to capture that.”

To showcase the dramatic differences between the locales, McCarthy and Takayanagi created unique approaches for each of the two places, relying on more static camerawork for the scenes in the United States and using handheld photography in Marseille. “In Oklahoma, we’re on dollie and sticks, and he uses different lenses,” says the filmmaker.  “I wanted to feel the weight and stagnancy of Bill’s life in Oklahoma by shooting a certain way.  Then we get to Marseille, and I want to feel the energy of the handheld and the vibrancy of that city.  It speaks to the two worlds that we’re dealing with.”

One of STILLWATER’s most logistically complicated sequences took the film’s cast and crew to one of Marseille’s signature locations: the 67,000-capacity State Vélodrome, home to the beloved football club Olympique de Marseille, or OM.  For the sequence in which Bill takes Maya to a game – she is an enormous soccer fan – only to realize they’re seated near the elusive Akim, the production shot during a live match.  “Tom and I went to the stadium numerous times to plan the sequence,” says cinematographer Takayanagi.  “We filmed with multiple cameras to capture the atmosphere as much as possible.  Then, we filmed close-ups and some other shots on a day when the stadium was empty.”

While most of the film was shot in Marseille, the production also visited Oklahoma City and surrounding towns to shoot the scenes that took place there, including those that open the film.