The Flicks Interview: Wayne Blair, Director of 'The Sapphires' A hit at this year's NZ International Film Festival, Aussie flick The Sapphires opens in cinemas this week. Based on a true story and set to a soul music soundtrack, The Sapphires tells the tale of four Aboriginal women in the 60s who are discovered by a talent scout (Chris O'Dowd, Bridesmaids ) and form a musical group that travels to Vietnam to perform for troops. Director Wayne Blair was in town recently and he sat down for a chat about the film with Flicks' Dominic Corry. FLICKS: Congratulations on the film -- the response has been great at festivals. How does it feel now that it's rolling out to a general audience? Can The Sapphires keep that momentum going? BLAIR: Look, that's the million dollar question. Yeah, I think so. It is an audience film and being in different places like Telluride, Colorado, that was such a different sort of film audience, then we had 2,000 French people. And then the last week was in Toronto we had two screenings I was involved with. It played beautifully in a sense of just people getting into it and at the end, you know, having a little bit of a laugh and a tear. So, look, it's doing well in Australia at the moment, it's nearly made $13 million in six weeks. Wow. It's been out there about a month, right? Six or seven weeks, I think it's the seventh week now.