Sweet As: Director Jub Clerc and star Shantae Barnes-Cowan on how film is helping to tell Indigenous stories

Landing in National Reconciliation Week, with the debate surrounding the Voice to Parliament simmering in the background, Sweet As appears ideally suited to this moment in time. The movie was shot in the Pilbara and is the debut feature for WA director Jub Clerc, who also wrote the script based on her own lived experiences as a Nyul Nyul/Yawuru woman. Opportunities for Indigenous directors have historically been limited, especially female filmmakers, so a national cinematic release is a significant achievement in itself. The fact Clerc’s film hits theatres Down Under after winning prestigious awards at international festivals not only makes Sweet As a singular accomplishment in West Aussie film, but it’s also a timely reminder of the cultural importance of Australia’s First Nations people. “From the first sunrise, we didn’t have a written language, it was all song and dance and paintings and yarns,” Clerc says on a video call with STM. “So to have this new medium of film at our disposal is incredible, you know, and a new way for us to tell our stories, and, like our other story-making tools, to have it in perpetuity, for generations.” Beloved in the WA screen industry, the irrepressible Clerc cut her teeth as a filmmaker on the TV series The Heights and directing a segment in the 2013 adaptation of The Turning by Tim Winton. Sweet As, though, is a far more personal undertaking, and is loosely based on her own childhood growing up as an at-risk teen in the State’s North West, infused with stories of friends and family. The sad reality is trauma is never far from the surface when you collect stories of being an Indigenous person in this country, and this manifests in Clerc’s film. It centres on Murra (Shantae Barnes-Cowan), a teenage girl living in Port Hedland, struggling to find her place in the world, because most of her energy is spent trying to survive a mother with substance abuse issues. Juxtaposing the machinery and wealth of the resources sector with the stark beauty of the Pilbara — much of the film was shot on Banjima country in Karijini National Park — Sweet As follows Murra as she embarks (rather unwillingly) on a camp-out with other at-risk kids. Each with their own set of personal challenges, these kids have much to learn, and the responsibility for guiding this literal journey of self-education is the kind-hearted but firm Mitch, played by Tasma Walton. With its themes and a cracking soundtrack composed exclusively by Indigenous artists, Clerc’s film speaks to the First Nations experience and, to the director’s credit, also operates as a classic coming-of-age tale that has universal appeal. “I think trauma is colourblind,” the director says. “You’ve got non-Indigenous characters in there that are going through their own traumas, which are different to people of colour, because we go through our traumas differently, and on a much larger scale, continuously, consecutively every day. “So it really was about that storytelling; it was telling a true yarn, and just seeing how that rolls off people’s tongues and in their heads and their hearts. I think that’s what the universal aspects and qualities of (the film are) that people can relate to.” The key to the movie’s success is the central performance of Barnes-Cowan, an Indigenous actor from Whyalla, who made her screen debut in 2019 working alongside Deb Mailman in the TV series Total Control. In 2021 she was cast as a kick-ass zombie killer in the Aussie genre flick Wyrmwood: Apocalypse, but Sweet As marks the first lead role for the Adelaide-based 19-year-old. And, for a number of reasons, this particular gig hit different to anything she’d worked on previously. “I think it hit me when I first got to Port Hedland (to shoot the film), and I spoke to Jub and learned that it was her story. All the things that she went through, and a lot of other people do, (made it feel like I was taking on) a big role,” the actor tells STM. “And, like Jub says in some interviews, it wasn’t her story any more — I made it my own and, to me, that’s just a big accomplishment and an honour to do that. But, yeah, it was a lot.” Playing Murra might have felt like a lot, but Barnes-Cowan is extraordinarily good when she’s doing nothing at all. And that ability to convey abundant and varied emotion wordlessly was a skill her director was all too eager to harness. “Shantae is one of those rare gems of an actor that you turn the camera on and they can stay completely still, and the camera will tell us a billion different stories about them, because she just gobbles up the screen,” Clerc gushes. “She just brought this real beautiful vulnerability and strength to the character that was so nuanced and beautiful. I just love her for it. “There’s only a couple of people that I’ve ever seen do it; I mean, of course, the amazing, late Mr Gulpilil was one of them, and I see beautiful aspects of Shantae in the way that she captures her performances how Gulpi could, and the camera just sings in front of them.” Clerc believes another aspect underpinning her lead actor’s fine performance is how Barnes-Cowan found something of herself in the role. “I grew up in foster care,” the actor agrees, “so I didn’t really have the best life as a kid, or a baby, because I was really confused about why I’d been given up. “And I guess in the story Murra didn’t really have the best relationship with her mum, and I was like, ‘Ah, right, that makes sense’, because I didn’t have the best relationship with my biological mother, you know. I guess that happens with a lot of Indigenous kids, though.” All too often, the set of circumstances Barnes-Cowan faced would have led down a path of further disenfranchisement, but the opposite occurred. “I don’t think I would have these opportunities if I wasn’t given up,” the actor admits. “I realised that my foster parents, who I just call Mum and Dad, have really just given me such a better life and more opportunities that I can go for and that come to me now. “I’ve been given a 10-times better life, and sometimes I do think, you know, ‘What would my life be like if I wasn’t fostered?’ and I definitely do not think it would be like this.” Life for the actor since making Sweet As has involved hitting the road with Clerc to show off the movie at influential film festivals in cities such as Toronto and Melbourne. “The Toronto International Film Festival was my first time outside of Australia, and that was unreal,” she laughs. Clerc puts it another way. “It’s been like a magic unicorn, with pixie dust flying out of it, and organic vegan lollies coming out of its eyeballs, and the Aboriginal flag flying in the wind behind,” the director says. “Just attending the festivals alone, the recognition for the film, has been so beautiful, but then to win at a lot of them, like winning the (Innovation Award at Melbourne International Film Festival) and then the NETPAC Award (for best Asian-Pacific film) at TIFF, becoming the first Australians to do so, and then winning a Crystal Bear at the Berlin (International) Film Festival . . . “Being able to go to all those countries and celebrate and talk about and share my culture . . . has just been blowing my mind away, actually.” Imagine, then, what it must feel like, after having your culture lauded around the world, to come back to the country your ancestors have walked for more than 60,000 years, and hear debate around a referendum to decide if your people deserve a voice in its government. “Obviously, that makes me mad,” Barnes-Cowan says. “Because I think that we do deserve to have our say, most definitely . . . You could go back to racism and how we’ve been treated, and our land and all that, but we accepted everyone (onto our land), so why can’t they accept us?” The actor says young Indigenous kids in her hometown of Whyalla probably haven’t even heard of the Voice, but that this is not a reflection of its importance but rather how two centuries of mistreatment have given little incentive for optimism. “They don’t know that we can speak up about things and there can be a change if we’re just heard.” Clerc understands why young Indigenous people might prefer to ignore what will almost certainly be a harmful debate, or why some probably see the Voice as a poor substitute for a national treaty. But, as with most things, the filmmaker opts to see the positives. “Look, it’s not like it’s anything new,” Clerc says. “It’s not like I’m being blindsided.” “We’re very resilient, because it’s happened throughout history. But I’m a revolting optimist — I always think, ‘One step back, three steps forward’, let’s see the change and become the change. “I’m voting yes. I’d like to have a Voice, but I do see that there’s people who have got questions, so basically just put on your big girl jowidtj (trousers) and go and find the truth (yourselves), from proper sources. “The world is so complicated now, but I think you just have to say, ‘Oh, would you like Indigenous people to have a voice? Yes or no? Am I a racist? Yes or no?’” Clerc laughs at that last bit, and hopes audiences will also find the humour running through her movie. “Blackfella humour comes from a really dark place, it’s a survival tactic,” she says. “Because if you didn’t laugh, you were crying. If you didn’t sing, you are crying. “So it’s the power to be able to overcome great adversity, with love and light in your heart. “And I hope audiences of the film take away from it the resilience of our mob, and . . . find a little bit of courage for themselves going forward with their life choices.” For those who want to look even deeper, Sweet As also offers a poignant, albeit subtle, examination of what the Stolen Generation lost. “When you’re stolen, you don’t know how to be a parent, because you’ve never been parented,” Clerc says. “And then you have children that you don’t know how to parent, and they have children that don’t know how to parent, and that generational trauma is real. “But there’s this humour in the darkness . . . and, like I said before, I’m a revolting optimist, so I’ll always see the positive and best side of everything for my own sanity as much as everybody else around me.” Sweet As is in cinemas now