We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nicholas Tabarrok a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nicholas, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Our most recently completed film, IRENA’S VOW, just premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. It’s a meaningful, important film because it’s the true story of one woman’s incredibly bravery and sacrifice during the holocaust. When the Nazi’s invaded Poland, Irena Gut, who was 18 years old at the time, was forced into labor to work as a maid in the house of the highest ranking Nazi officer in the town of Tarnopol. Amazingly, she hid and kept alive 12 Jews in the basement of the house during the entire occupation. She hid, fed and protected 12 people literally and figuratively under the nose of the Nazis. Obviously this put her at great personal risk, but she put the lives of others above her own.

We shot the film in Warsaw last year, Sophie Nelisse (YELLOWJACKETS) turned out an incredible performance as IRENA with Dougray Scott (MY LIFE WITH MARILYN) playing the Nazi officer. The film was directed by Louise Archambault and she made a very powerful and moving picture, which received raptures reviews coming out of TIFF.

It will be released in early 2024.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am a feature film and television producer. Originally from Canada, I started my career in Toronto before moving to Los Angeles in 2007. My company, Darius Films, has offices and staff in both cities and we have produced around 30 films over the past 20 years or so. Our films have played at many of the major film festivals around the world, won awards, and sold world wide. Our series FUGGET ABOUT IT is a cult fan favorite on Hulu here in the US and on many international channels.

We have been very fortunate to have worked with some of the most talented actors, writers and directors in the business and continue to develop and produce work which will entertain audiences around the world.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I describe the job of a film producer as having one foot (or half a brain if you will) in the creative side and the other in business, which suits me perfectly. I enjoy switching back and forth. Though it may seem boring to others (I get it!) I actually enjoy working with budgets, cash flows, financing structures and legal contracts. But I really get the most satisfaction from my job working with creative people.

Working on scripts with writers, casting films alongside the director, being on set, spending time in the edit suite and the mix stage – these are the parts of the job I enjoy most and thrive on. I think of myself as a “semi-creative”: I don’t have the full skill set to be a writer, composer, director, actor or editor myself, but I feel I have enough talent in those areas that my viewpoint, my opinion, my suggestions, can heighten and be additive to the final product. I find that collaborative process immensely satisfying.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I have run my company, Darius Films, for about 25 years now. Inevitably – it happens to every business – in that time the company has had some downtimes when projects weren’t moving and nothing was visible on the horizon. The year 2019 was one of those slow ones for us, just part of the natural ebbs and flows in business you can’t control, and then of course the pandemic of 2020 was devastating for the whole world. So for two years we had no greenlit productions. That was a very, very hard period for us. We had to close our offices, let some people go and go through some lean times. We hung in there however and kept working, developing projects, putting packages together and because of that 2021 was a huge year for us. By keeping our heads down and working through that awful 2020 and not letting it stop us lead to a boon period over the following two years. It was a good lesson in resilience.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dariusfilms.com

Image Credits
all photos can be credit “courtesy of Darius Films”