How we made Romulus, My Father: ‘I said no to 10 to 12 offers – I didn’t want there to be a film’

When Raimond Gaita published Romulus, My Father in 1998, an account of his father’s life that stemmed from the eulogy he delivered at his father’s funeral, it stirred something deep in Australia; the book “changed the quality of the literary air in this country” as Helen Garner once wrote. It told the story of Gaita’s childhood in Frogmore, Victoria, in the 1960s, an isolated, ancient land that his parents fled to from postwar Europe. Raimond’s mother, Christina, had manic depression and soon left her son and husband to start a new life with one of Romulus’ friends, Mitru. Father and son muddled on through poverty and pain, weathering the sorrow that tied all these lives together.

When actor Richard Roxburgh was given a copy of Romulus, My Father by his sister, he knew immediately he had to adapt it. “When I told my sister, she said, ‘I knew you’d say that.’”

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Roxburgh’s film, starring Eric Bana, Franka Potente and a 10-year-old Kodi Smit-McPhee, was a tiny project with an outsized impact: it made $2.5m at the Australian box office and stormed the 2007 Australian Film Institute awards, winning best film, best actor for Bana and best young actor for Smit-McPhee, now one of Australia’s leading stars.

But, as is the way in the streaming era, Romulus, My Father has mostly disappeared – until now, with a 4K restoration screening at this year’s Melbourne international film festival. This is the story of how it was made.

‘I said, you can’t possibly do this’

Raimond Gaita, author: A month or two after Romulus was published, my agent was approached for the rights to adapt it. I said no to 10 to 12 offers. I didn’t want there to be a film, because it is so hard to portray mental illness without condescension. That was really important for me, to respect the suffering of the people I was writing about. I knew there would be temptations in yielding to sentimentality.

There were some great directors – and then along came Richard. He’d never directed a film before. But my agent said he was an incredible young actor and very loved in Sydney – all of which instinctively put me against him.

Richard Roxburgh, director: I wanted to prove I could do it. Autobiographies are complicated to film, and this one was very complicated. Rai needed to know it was not going to be commercialised or tilted in a direction that would make him uncomfortable. And I had a job of convincing him. He was in London, so I wrote to him and said: “Look, I’d love to come and talk to you about it.” He said, “No, please don’t do that. I don’t want to feel beholden to you.”

Gaita: He came to London with two bottles of really good red wine. I liked him pretty much straight away. I was impressed by his love of the book. He said he didn’t want to be a director, he just wanted to direct this one film. But, despite all that, I said, “You still can’t have it.” I eventually agreed that he could try writing a screenplay, but I insisted on a really ruthless contract that enabled me to say no without offering any kind of reason whatsoever. If I instinctively thought it was wrong, I didn’t want to be required to articulate why.

Roxburgh: I was puzzling over the screenplay for a long time. In about 2001, I finally realised I couldn’t do it.

Gaita: I said, fine, call it off. But Richard kept saying, “how about this guy?” It took us six years to get to Nick [Drake, the screenwriter]. I said that I wanted a screenwriter who was a poet and who had a European sensibility. I don’t know why! But that’s what I got.

Nick came to Australia and I took him to Frogmore. The house had burned down some years before, and it was one of those gray, awful summer days. Frogmore was covered with thistles. It looked terrible. Nick was so shocked, because he had expected something more beautiful. So I insisted we come back to see it, quite literally, in another light. We went back at late afternoon another day and that changed his mind completely. But he told me afterwards that he was glad to have seen it as he first saw it, because it enabled him to understand how my mother probably felt.

I read all of Nick’s drafts and left comments. Some were trivial, some were serious. There was a draft where my mother attempted to kill herself while pregnant and I said, “You can’t possibly do this.” I knew that people would think my mother was prepared to do that, and this is something she would never have done. But that was cut immediately.

Kodi Smit-McPhee, actor who played Raimond: Before I even auditioned, my dad, who is an actor, took me where Romulus and Raimond lived. The house wasn’t there anymore, but you could see where it stood. We spoke to people in the town; everyone knew him. His story started to become very meaningful and real to me.

Roxburgh: We began watching a lot of tapes from kids. Kodi’s tape came through quickly, from memory, and you could see he had this intense, remarkable maturity. But we thought, “Well, it can’t be that easy!” So we looked at about 500 kids until we realised we’d already found him.

Gaita: I was in London when they found Kodi. Nick wrote to me: “They found a miracle.” And it’s true.

Roxburgh: I didn’t really know Eric. His last name is Banadinović – his father is Croatian and his mother is German, so he had a strong kindred connection with the idea of Romulus. He’s very strong, very straight up and down, but he also has a vulnerability.

‘I found directing ridiculously stressful – it was really, really hard on my soul’

Smit-McPhee: Everyone did a good job of not letting me dwell too much on the dark, complex parts of the story, but I was aware of all of it. I understood that these things happen. I related to Raimond – we didn’t have a lot of money and that puts a certain stress on a family. He dealt with a lot harder things than I did, but I was able to grasp them.

Roxburgh: During rehearsals, I tried to get Eric and Kodi to spend as much time as they could together. Kodi was so great with adults, so smart. He’s very special. I was able to spend time with him again when we did Elvis and he’s still special. He is a very vulnerable soul – you just want to look after him. But he was magnificent to work with. Without him, the film couldn’t have been imagined. He had a sort of adult wit – but never precocious. And within a year he was off to Hollywood to make The Road, so he was on a completely different trajectory.

We shot on location, very close to where Rai’s house once stood. It was very time sensitive because you’ll lose light, and I found the stress of directing really difficult to manage. There’s just some things that are known facts about film-making – crews work slower in the morning and then they have to belt it in the afternoon to get the day done. Every day on a film set is a compromise, but I wasn’t sufficiently across that. I found directing ridiculously stressful. It was really, really hard on my soul. I couldn’t bear it not happening in the way that I wanted to.

Gaita: I didn’t go on set, even though we lived near where the film was being shot. But at the wrap party, Richard introduced me to Kodi. He said: “Rai, meet Rai.” And Kodi put his arms around me and cried. He said, “I’ve lived your life for the last four months.” That made me cry. It was such an astonishing thing for a 10-year-old boy to say. After that, he clung to me for an hour. Kodi has a place deep in my heart. I’m not exaggerating when I say I love him.

Smit-McPhee: It was a silent understanding. We didn’t have to say anything. We just cried.

Gaita: I was invited to a private screening with my wife. We cried for the whole film. Afterwards we drove almost two hours from Melbourne to our home, and didn’t say a word to each other. It took a while to process. It’s strange because I had read every draft of the screenplay and it was still a shock to see Kodi playing me. And he is on the screen for about 90% of the film – I had tried to keep myself out of the book, rather puritanically, so to find myself on screen was a great shock.

Smit-McPhee: After Romulus, I did The Road, and was working with incredible people – Viggo Mortensen and director John Hillcoat. At some point, when you delve a bit deep into Hollywood, you see how it can go sideways – you have an unpleasant experience, or you don’t have people that care for you. It was only in my 20s that I realised how incredible I’d had it. I’d been in this safety bubble with the most incredible directors and actors protecting me.

Eric and Viggo were the perfect role models. They shaped how I approach my industry now, how I stay focused and respectful and make sure there is no hierarchy within the set. Eric and Viggo don’t chase the limelight like a lot of A-list actors do. Stuff like the Oscars, it’s almost treated like the Olympics – that can get really exhausting. It’s easy for a young person to think that’s what it’s all about. But for me, it’s never been about that.

Gaita: I don’t know why people respond to Romulus as they do. At a literary festival, one woman said to me, “My husband has read one book in his entire life, and it was Romulus.” But it was on the school curriculum too and there is a picture of a girl burning her copy – so that’s the other side!

People often talk about what they admire about my father – his integrity, his honour, his nobility. He had those virtues. But what was most important about my father – and the film captures this, I believe – was his goodness. You could see it in how he dealt with my mother and Mitru. My father often paid their rent when they were short on money. Some of his compatriots were disdainful of this, saying: “For God’s sake man, do you have no pride? Your wife cuckolds you and you pay their rent?” But I’m very glad that they captured this in the film. I know Richard found directing quite difficult, but I think he did a wonderful job.

Smit-McPhee: Everyone who worked on Romulus has still got a very special place in my heart. It feels like it wasn’t that long ago, and a lifetime ago at the same time.

Roxburgh: I recently watched the remastered version. It was the first time I’d seen the film! I never really watch my work. But I loved it. It’s a difficult film, in some ways, because it’s a study in quietude. Some people get it, some don’t. But I’m so happy that it is being restored. It means a lot to me that it won’t decay away. It’s very sad to me that there’s not a sense of curating our old films the way the Europeans do. I hope that we find the same deep regard for Australian films some day.

• The 4K restoration of Romulus, My Father is screening at ACMI as part of Melbourne international film festival on 17 August