Aussie filmmaker has movie cancelled reportedly because of Sam Bradford pod

Australian filmmaker Kane Guglielmi spent four years and “every dollar” he had making Common Wealth, a documentary about the traumas that shaped his life, including the death of his brother.

The filmmaker says that once it was done, he appeared on 2 Worlds Collide, a podcast hosted by army veteran Sam Bamford, who served in Afghanistan.

According to Guglielmi, within just two weeks the distributor, Garage Entertainment, a division of Madman Entertainment, told him that his remaining screenings had been cancelled and that the film would not be promoted in the future. 

Guglielmi said it cited its objection to conservative Bamford.

Guglielmi claims he now holds the rights to his film. Today he is releasing Common Wealth directly to audiences worldwide.

Speaking on Kyle Sandiland's podcast this morning, Guglielmi told him it had been a challenging process.

"It's been a difficult month, I'll be honest, but I guess I took a risk in the sense that I really value my free speech and my voice and my version of truth.

"That's the most important thing and I made this film for everyone, as you were talking about before, not for the left, not for the right, I made it for everyone.

"It's no secret that I'm a bit more conservative, but I went and explored and went with an open mind to hear other ideas, the way that systems are functioning politically and economically in other parts of the world. I share it transparently in the film in a way that there's no agenda, there's no bias. 

He added, “In fact, some of the stuff that I explore in the film, I'm actually not really the personal advocate, but I did so because I thought that was the authentic thing to do was to just show people what I found and let them as the audience decide for themselves.”

Sandilands replied, "How refreshing, you weren't forcing your own thoughts down someone's throat. You actually take facts to allow the audience to make up their own mind, which I feel is where a lot of news services, newspapers, free-to-air news television, even cable TV, the CNN versus the Fox News couldn't be polar opposites if you tried. 

“You look at one story, how CNN presented, same story how Fox News presented, you might as well be living on different planets, like they're completely different opinions on one story, but it's very nice that you've just gone out and you haven't thought you've known everything.”

The filmmaker expressed his disappointment to Sandilands, saying the distributor "didn't take any risk. They went nowhere to be seen for all the years that I struggled to get the film to the finish line. Their responsibility is to commit.

"In fact, on that tour that I did for three months in Australia, I pretty much handled all of the press and all the promotion myself. They didn't actually do that. Did they tell you why? Did they say why? Is this their own internal rules? They didn't tell you, hey, by the way, when you come and sign up with us as a distributor, we're going to have all these unnecessary rules that may stall the project? No, there's none of that.

"This is why I got my film back in the end, because I didn't do anything against my agreement. The situation was that I did all these shows all around the country. At each show after the screening, there was a Q&A.

“We always had panels. I wanted to have you at my panel in Sydney with David Botkin. That would have been fun.”