{"id":948160,"date":"2026-10-27T12:52:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T12:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/948160\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T12:52:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T12:52:19","slug":"film-maker-sinead-oshea-on-fergie-chambers-he-offered-me-enough-that-id-never-have-to-work-again-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/948160\/","title":{"rendered":"Film-maker Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Shea on Fergie Chambers: \u2018He offered me enough that I\u2019d never have to work again\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cPeople seem to have stopped presuming that documentaries are telling the truth or that they\u2019re a form of journalism,\u201d Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Shea<\/a> says in her firm but calm fashion. \u201cI think they expect them to reflect the journalist\u2019s own agenda or to be celebratory or denunciatory. This idea of it as a truth-telling form seems to have left the building.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past decade, O\u2019Shea has developed into one of our most reliable cinematic truth-tellers. A Mother Brings Her Son to Be Shot<\/a>, her first feature documentary, which she made in 2017, addressed grim aftershocks of the Troubles in Derry. Pray for Our Sinners<\/a>, from 2022, saw O\u2019Shea return to her native Navan for a compulsive tale about resistance to the Catholic Church<\/a> and its treatment of children. Blue Road: The Edna O\u2019Brien Story<\/a> proved a significant hit in 2025. It transpired there was still a healthy interest in that charismatic Irish writer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is actually the most independently successful Irish documentary ever,\u201d she says. \u201cApart from the Conor McGregor one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now she moves to a very different character. All About the Money, which debuted at Sundance Film Festival in January, tells the story of the eccentric multimillionaire James \u201cFergie\u201d Chambers jnr<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Former heir to the Cox Enterprises empire and great-grandson of James M Cox, twice governor of Ohio, this unlikely communist, after other exercises in leftist activism, set up a collective in Alford, Massachusetts. The film takes him from that enterprise, a refuge for less well-off radicals, to later, luxury exile in Dublin.<\/p>\n

What it was unable to cover was his arrest in Ibiza<\/a> this summer, following, as this newspaper reported, a request for his extradition by the United States, which had accused him of funding the Palestinian<\/a> militant group Hamas<\/a>. Last month, Richard Gere, Cynthia Nixon, Natasha Lyonne and Viggo Mortensen were among those signing a letter asking the Spanish authorities to reject<\/a> the US demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is a really significant donor to a lot of Palestinian charities,\u201d O\u2019Shea says. \u201cAnd it does feel as if that\u2019s his main crime. Yes, he\u2019s annoying. Yes, he says things which are intemperate and are incendiary at times. But you cannot extradite somebody for that. And he\u2019s looking at 30 years in prison if he\u2019s extradited.\u201d<\/p>\n

All this only scratches the surface of this odd story. The later stages of O\u2019Shea\u2019s film have much to do with the subject\u2019s investment in a struggling Tunisian soccer team. The spell in Dublin has its own peculiarities. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Fergie Chambers: The Dublin-based communist millionaire in the Trump administration\u2019s crosshairsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Through it all, the director gently nudges Chambers towards head-scratchy insights. At one stage he confesses that he is so wealthy it\u2019s scarcely possible to spend it all. We are always aware that, unlike everyone around him in the commune, his fortune will always allow an escape route.<\/p>\n

Until now, perhaps?<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is an interesting question,\u201d O\u2019Shea says cautiously. \u201cI don\u2019t know. He has a very strong legal team. I have been speaking to them a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

All About the Money seems scrupulously fair to Chambers. His more grandiose pronouncements are often hard to take seriously. Yet his desire to heal the world feels sincere. As is often the case these days, viewers \u2013 and subjects \u2013 see what they want to see in the documentary. Chambers himself was, shall we say, unsure about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a spoiler any more that he didn\u2019t like the film,\u201d O\u2019Shea says. \u201cHe offered me large amounts of money to stop it being screened at Sundance<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

What kind of sums were involved?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was enough that I\u2019d never have to work again,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s a good bit. He actually started offering money before the film even got into Sundance. I think, for documentary makers, Sundance is their Palme d\u2019Or. It\u2019s their Cannes. So I was very committed to screening in Sundance. But I just didn\u2019t want to take the money. This is going to sound really pathetic, but I didn\u2019t want the relationship with him to be so transactional.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JamesJames \u201cFergie\u201d Chambers in All About the Money <\/p>\n

Yet it sounds as if Chambers, forever an enigma, remained conflicted about the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had come to an accommodation about the film,\u201d O\u2019Shea says. \u201cBut he had also said that, when it was released, he would really like to participate in Q&As and events. So I\u2019m conscious now that he can\u2019t … that he\u2019s in prison. So I do feel a need to speak on his behalf as much as possible, and try to present his perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

All About the Money offers plenty of confirmation for those who regard Chambers as a crank. That did not stop some at Sundance, the leading event for independent US cinema, from arguing that the film \u201chumanised\u201d its subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s actually quite an even-handed film,\u201d O\u2019Shea says. (I agree.) \u201cBut it\u2019s not enough for people. They need me to crucify Fergie. And I don\u2019t want to do that. Actually, I do like him. I do find some things admirable about him. And I do completely believe that he has suffered a huge amount.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Shea is an impressive operator. Over the past nine years she has delivered four very different films, each of which shows gifts for research and the organisation of narrative. Where does she begin? How does she know when to stop? Few true stories come to a neat conclusion.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou really have to self-produce,\u201d she says. \u201cOne of the big lessons of this film is that there is no deus ex machina in life. There is no benevolent God who\u2019s going to alleviate our discomforts. It\u2019s the same in documentary. There are only a handful of very good producers who will do all the heavy lifting. And so I think for documentary, you have to self-produce.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018I knew I\u2019d never seen anything like it\u2019: Josh Brolin and Austin Abrams on WhalefallOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

O\u2019Shea goes on to acknowledge the invaluable contribution of co-producers such as Claire McCabe and Katie Holly \u2013 both credited on All About the Money \u2013 but it must be hard to have an ordinary home life if you are taking that much work on yourself. Production on The Blue Road and All About the Money overlapped.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t even get into it,\u201d she says, cackling. \u201cIt\u2019s a disaster. It\u2019s just awful. Making these two films at the same time was an insane undertaking. But it was just the timing. I guess I had both ideas at once, and I had just made Pray for Our Sinners. I knew I could get development money for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is there a conventional route into this business? Probably not. But O\u2019Shea certainly made her own way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI studied English in university. I was in Trinity, but I was really immature and quite stupid,\u201d she says. \u201cI was 17 when I started. So when I finished, in a state of shame, I was waitressing in San Francisco. People were talking about documentaries there. <\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t even seen a documentary. But I just thought the world is really fascinating. I still really like that aspect of documentary. It\u2019s probably its strength and its weakness: you can do it yourself and you don\u2019t need permission from anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018You hack her phone, then you kill her\u2019: What Israeli intelligence officers told Naza director Yuval Abraham about their tactics in GazaOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

After a master\u2019s degree in film she moved into journalism, eventually ending up at Al Jazeera<\/a> English. Shooting and editing and directing packages there, she learned how to get complex stories on screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of people who work in journalism have this feeling also, where you do wish you could have gone deeper or spent longer on a story,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

That is what she has been doing ever since. Each film has gathered its own portion of noise. The Blue Road brought people to the cinema who had given up on the theatrical experience. Why does she think the late Edna O\u2019Brien<\/a>, interviewed at length in the film, remained such a draw?<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do I account for its popularity?\u201d she says. \u201cI think there was a group of people who were very evangelical about it, and they were going back for repeat viewings and bringing grandchildren and nieces and nephews. It\u2019s very nice. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ll never make anything so well liked again. I doubt the people who liked the Edna O\u2019Brien film will even hear about this,\u201d she says with a laugh. <\/p>\n

O\u2019Shea talks about making a drama. She stresses her affection for the documentary form. I assume she is not going to tell me what she is doing next. Film-makers do like to keep that sort of thing under their hats.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo. I\u2019d say people are reluctant to say because they\u2019re just so embarrassed when, five years later, it hasn\u2019t happened. So we\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\n

All About the Money is in cinemas from Friday, October 30th<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cPeople seem to have stopped presuming that documentaries are telling the truth or that they\u2019re a form of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":948161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[49,48,17610,324583,75,324582,13191,337,23156,324581,79083],"class_list":["post-948160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-catholic-church","tag-edna-o-brien","tag-entertainment","tag-fergie-chambers","tag-hamas","tag-movies","tag-palestine","tag-sinead-o-shea","tag-sundance-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/948161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}