Support Group Olympus

Jimmy Francis has been interested in visual storytelling since he was a young child.
Having parents from two very different parts of the world, Jimmy has grown up with the contrasts of roasting breadfruit on the tropical beaches of Barbados to shoveling snow in the long dark Swedish winters. Two places that he both calls home.

Through his experiences, Jimmy believes that people are all the same wherever you are in the world. An outlook that he hopes is a common underlying theme in his work.

From the age of five, Jimmy used to draw his favorite films, shot-by-shot, on long paper rolls and pull them through paper box television sets that he built.
Copying films like Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and Jaws, which he of course was actually too young to see, Spielberg was a key figure in setting a visual inspiration through his childhood.

Around the age of eight, Jimmy started imitating these films, among others with the family video camera. As the years rolled on he would invest in his own camera as he wrote, planned, directed and shot his own short films using his friends as cast members. During this time he would also come to understand that this hobby of his was an actual job that he could pursue to work with. So he did.

Jimmy studied film on his own time as well as applying to media gymnasium (high school). He would often stay late in the evenings after school when it was only him and the janitor left in the building to work on his own projects in the editing rooms. During these years he made a number of short films including his short film idea for Support Group Olympus.

After making the short film “Support Group Olympus”, Jimmy didn’t do much with it, as he didn’t feel it turned out as planned. He did however feel the basic idea of former Greek Gods going to therapy in modern times was an interesting idea and set out to write it as a feature film. A story he would write and re-write for the next eight years.

Jimmy went from studying film to working as a crew member on different productions as well as a equipment rental coordinator for film productions. During these years he undertook another large personal dream project and started renovating an old wooden ship that he would eventually call his home.

Returning to the world of freelance, Jimmy has for the past years been making his living as a First Assistant Director within the Swedish Film industry.

Writing “Support Group Olympus” over a longer period, it changed several times and started incorporating elements from personal experiences from his own life. He felt it was a story he had to tell and set out to find producers and investment but after several failed attempts, including the Swedish film grants, he decided to proceed in shooting the film anyway.

Through savings and bank loans Jimmy was able to invest approximately 30 000 Euro into his project which was far from enough but thanks to his years of contacts and friends within the film industry he was able to put together a cast, crew, equipment and several locations that all worked on deferment contracts in order to get the film made.

So thanks to life imitating art, and vice versa, Jimmy is now close to completing another childhood dream. His debut feature film.