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Still alive and hearty, 97-year-old Lula now lives with her family and grandchildren in Poland, after seeing the completed film, it took Lula a while to absorb and communicate her feelings. She broke down and thanked her great-grand-daughter, all the while overwhelmed by her memories and emotions.<\/p>\n
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Played by Marta Kane, Lula\u2019s character is strong and passionate and the actors reverberate emotions throughout the film never losing the audience\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n
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The SS officers played by, Jo Weil and David Imper specially flew over from Germany to England for the film and Marta Kane picked up German in order to do her role complete justice.<\/p>\n
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An ambitious project such as Lula, required funding which primarily came from their Indiegogo Campaign. Relying greatly on donations and crowd funding, it took four months of hard-work to finish the project.<\/p>\n
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\u201cCrowdfunding platforms can and do work, competition is tough though, remember, generating support locally from your home area can be a good idea too,\u201d Ms Moore suggested.<\/p>\n
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Run entirely by students a team of five set designers led by Freya Dolby and assisted by students from the Wimbledon College of Arts, spent two days up to their knees in debris cleaning and designing the whole barn including creating an authentic polish stove.<\/p>\n
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\u201cLula came about from my producer and friend Sara Kurp who I was studying with in London. She told me of this incredible story of her great-grandmother, Lula, and how she managed to survive on this fateful day when she was interrogated by German soldiers,\u201d Director Aoife O\u2019Kelly recalls.<\/p>\n
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Crowd funding requires a great deal of effort and patience, Ms O\u2019Kelly feels.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s good to make an excel sheet to keep track of anyone who has donated money to you and be in touch after. Ultimately, it takes a lot of communication and following up with people to encourage funding and support but we managed to get a solid budget for the film luckily and we\u2019re very grateful to all our crowd-funders for that,\u201d Ms O\u2019Kelly added.<\/p>\n
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Asked if women faced an added pressure while directing a film Aoife said: \u201cI think making a film requires the exact same process and commitment from a woman as it does for a man, and women are fully capable of handling those challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Her success along film festivals has provided Director Aoife O\u2019Kelly a number of future opportunities and she feels it is essential to put your films out there in order to receive better feedback.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe just decided where we thought the film might fit and started sending off a number of applications (that our budget could afford – plan for that in advance!). Attending networking events at these festivals or film mixers can also help if you want to meet people involved in the festival and chat to them about your film there.<\/p>\n
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Producer Sara Kurp has been extremely attached to the film and accompanied her great-grand mother and family in watching the final piece.<\/p>\n
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\u201cAfter about 10 minutes she started laughing which was a relief for me, my mum and my grandma, who were also in the room. We asked her why she was laughing and she said that everything in the film was so real and amazing but her real life husband was much bigger!\u201d Ms. Kurp recalled.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.anfocal.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Lula-and-Zygmunt-1942-300x239.png\")