Danny Ashton, Nancy Bird Walton

Source: Andy Baker, Northern Pictures / Courtesy Nancy Bird Walton Estate

Darren Ashton, Nancy Bird Walton

Screen Australia has selected four features to receive production funding in its latest round of awards including a 1930s-set romantic comedy inspired by Australia’s first female commercial pilot.

The titles are Little Bird, directed by Darren Ashton; Samuel Van Grinsven’s thriller Went Up The Hill; Jon Bell’s psychological horror The Moogai; and Marcelle Lunam’s romantic comedy Addition.

The government agency has approved $8.2m (AU$12m) to be shared among the features as well as three TV dramas and two children’s projects.

UK-based Parkland Pictures has international sales rights to Little Bird, which is set in the 1930s and follows a poor young woman who teams with a dashing but burnt-out instructor to form one of Australia’s most extraordinary flying teams. Inspired by pioneering aviator Nancy Bird Walton, it will be directed by Ashton, who has worked prolifically in TV for more than a decade but made features Thunderstruck in 2004 and Razzle Dazzle in 2007.

“There’s Nancy’s love of flying and her dream to get airborne no matter what, the danger and romance of flying in canvas-covered biplanes, as well as the romantic Australian landscape,” the filmmaker told Screen.

“The beautiful thing about this film is that she is not a household name,” added Joe Weatherson, who is producing with Catherine Nebauer for Northern Pictures. The name will be better known soon as Sydney’s second international airport, currently under construction, has been titled Western Sydney International Nancy-Bird Walton Airport.

It will mark the first feature for Northern Pictures and the actor set to play the lead will soon be signed. State government agency Screen NSW and KOJO are also investors.

Ghost stories

Two features on the slate of UK sales and finance company Bankside Films have also received Screen Australia funding.

Went Up The Hill marks the second feature of New Zealand born, Sydney-based filmmaker Samuel Van Grinsven, whose Sequin in a Blue Room won the Sydney Film Festival audience award in 2019. The thriller follows a man who travels to remote New Zealand to attend the funeral of his estranged mother and meets her widow. But his mother’s ghost returns to inhabit both her son and her widow.

Producers are Samantha Jennings of Kristina Ceyton for Causeway Films, whose credits include Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook and The Nightingale as well as Goran Stolevski’s You Won’t Be Alone and recent award-winner Of An Age. Vicky Pope also produces.

Ceyton and Jennings are also producers (alongside Mitchell Stanley) on The Moogai, a feature-length version of Bell’s psychological horror short of the same name, which won best Australian short film at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2020 and SXSW’s Midnight Shorts jury prize in 2021.

The story follows a young mother who is terrorised by an evil spirit intent on taking her children. Screen Australia’s head of First Nations Angela Bates said The Moogai explores “important themes of intergenerational trauma, colonisation and power”.

“Shining a spotlight on Australian stories, is so important, not just for those in the arts sector, but all of us as Australians,” added federal arts minister Tony Burke said: “These stories contribute to our national identity.”

The fourth title, Addition, marks the feature directorial debut of Lunam and is handled internationally by WME. Produced by Made Up Stories and Buon Giorno Productions, it is described as “a romantic comedy about accepting who you are and celebrating the things in life that really count”.

In 2021/22 Screen Australia supplied over $30m (AU$44m) of production funding for feature films, TV dramas and children’s programming. Through the First Nations Department, the agency provided a further $4m (AU$6m) to drama productions.