Indigenous coming-of-age movie Sweet As to be filmed in Pilbara

A coming-of-age movie about a teenage Aboriginal girl will begin filming in the Pilbara next year after securing major funding from Screen Australia and Screenwest yesterday. Sweet As is the debut feature film for highly-respected Nyul Nyul/Yawuru director Jub Clerc, who based the script on her own experiences growing up in WA’s north-west. The funding announcement, which includes investment through the State Government’s Regional Film Fund, puts Sweet As on the same trajectory as recent high-profile films such as Rams, Dirt Music and H is for Happiness. “That sounds really surreal when you say it like that,” Clerc said. Clerc has directed episodes of The Heights and worked on the TV series Mystery Road. She said it was too early to talk casting decisions but she had a few actors in mind and planned to have the majority of roles in her film filled by Indigenous actors. “Down to even the most simplest characters you just don’t think to cast Indigenous, like a shop owner, all those roles that you would potentially, unconsciously cast as anything but Aboriginal, I’ve gone, ‘Nah, they’re going to be Aboriginal’,” Clerc said. The film will be produced by Arenamedia, the team behind 2014 Aussie hit Paper Planes, which is another reason Sweet As could prove to be exactly that for Clerc and the WA film industry.