Getting an indie film distributed is as tough as producing it

Have you ever fantasised about making a movie? Perhaps you have a script rolling around in your head that you think would delight and dazzle audiences, along with a casting plan culled from Hollywood's A-list of talent.

But beware. Filmmaking ranks somewhere alongside opening a restaurant in terms of ventures that can seem fun and compelling, but which ultimately are likely to drain your wallet and break your heart. Even if you succeed in making an independent film, it's usually difficult to get it distributed.

This brings us to our cautionary tale about Jason Sankey, 32, and Uri Schwarz, 33. The pair recently completed shooting their first independent feature film, Stories Forlorn. It took them 10 years to finish the project. Funding was a nightmare, and the film has yet to get a public screening.

Sankey and Schwarz studied drama and theatre together at Island School in the 1980s. Their film is based on a poem Sankey wrote as a teenager, which he turned into a novel when he was 23.

It's a coming-of-age tale about expats and local kids in Hong Kong private schools, set against the backdrop of the 1997 handover. The handover acts as a metaphor for a teenager's search for identity.

The setting of the story presented the first big problem. Few were interested in making a Hong Kong film told from an expat perspective. Film financiers wanted to change the script "to include a China theme to improve its marketability", Sankey says. "I outright rejected that because it was so alien to my vision."

Sankey got his first big boost when local actress Maggie Q read the novel and encouraged him to adapt it into a script. Unfortunately, no movie deal or monetary advance came with the encouragement. Sankey made a living as a copywriter while working on his script at night.