La mula

💡 Did You Know?

In 2009, in the sixth week of filming "The Mule", with only one more week to shoot, director Michael Radford abandoned the production. The Spanish producer Alejandra Frade accused Radford and the Irish and British Production companies of not supplying their respective part of the funding for the film, not paying the British film workers, not paying a personal loan she made to Radford and a breach of contract when he abandoned the shooting. Radford accused Frade of not signing some papers that will eventually release the funding already granted by the Irish Film Board and the UK Film Council. Frade stated that she could not sign those papers as that will mean a "death sentence" for her film company as those papers do not specify certain amounts of money and they ask her to assume funding and expenses that do not belong to Gheko Films, her film production company. Over several years different politicians from Ireland, UK and Spain tried unsuccessfully to do some arbitrage among Radford and Frade. Radford tried to press Frade as he had the negatives of the film and she could not release the film with Radford name on it. First Frade shot the remaining week of shooting with another director, and then in a controversial move, she finally released the film in 2013 using the digital files for the editing instead of the negatives. There is no director credited on this released version, only the term 'Anonymous' is used.