Australian First Nations company Djali House Productions won the top prize at 37º South, the market of the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), on August 9.
The prize included A$3,000 in expenses to attend Film London’s Production Film Market (PFM) at the UK’s BFI London Film Market in October.
Angie Fielder, who presented Paradise at 37º South, and Rachel Forbes and Celyren Leckie of Velvet Riot Films, which attended with Dinner At Seven by writer-director Rodrigo Badoino, also won automatic entry into PFM.
Additionally, two producing teams, Lucie McMahon and Pat Mooney, and Emma Mortimer and Lani-rain Feltham, will attend the PFM’s rising talent training strand.
Djali House, comprising producer-writer Huna Amweero and producer-actor Hunter Page-Lockhard, pitched five projects at the four-day, invite-only 37º South. They included Shari Sebbens’ feature debut The Black Talons, a comedy creature feature about a girls’ netball team from a government housing tower block trying to survive mutant crocodiles. Maria Lewis wrote the script.
The company also presented We Are Pirates, a crime comedy in which an art expert travels to the UK to steal back a painting from a duke, with the help of a professional heist team.
Production will start in October on Djali House’s first feature Songman, written and directed by Stephen Page, Page-Lockhard’s father. The film will honour the filmmaker’s late brother David Page, a musician, composer, drag performer and theatre maker.
Aaron Pedersen leads the cast of nearly all First Nations actors.
Page became the third owner of the company in 2023 after leaving his 30-year role as artistic director of the world-renowned Bangarra Dance Company. He was a key creator of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Sydney Olympic Games and directed and co-wrote the film Spear, starring Page-Lochard.
Djali’s focus is on urban stories made by a new generation of indigenous filmmakers and celebrating indigenous and ancestral culture. It aims to provide skills and career pathways for the next generation of talent.
Festival prizes
La Gradiva by French director Marine Atlan was awarded the A$140,000 Bright Horizons prize, supported by VicScreen, at the closing night ceremony of the MIFF on August 22.
The film about a French school trip to Pompeii debuted in Cannes Critics’ Week in May.
Additionally, Dario Russo won the best Australian director award for The Fox. Sponsored by Blackmagic Design, the award included a £50,000 cash prize and an URSA Cine 12K camera.
Mexican director Fernanda Tovar’s Sad Girlz won the $10,000 MIFF schools youth jury award judged by a jury of three young filmmakers. The film won Berlin’s Generation 14 Plus strand earlier this year.
A special mention was given to Josef Gatti’s Phenomena.
Isaac Elliott’s Hard As Puck won the audience award, sponsored by travel company Inertia.
Director Talia Liddle won the $20,000 Uncle Jack Charles award for the short film Protest On The Dance Floor, which recognises an outstanding Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander screen creative featured in the festival programme.
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