Director Annalise Hickey on New Short, ‘Hafekasi’
Images Courtesy of Annalise Hickey
Hafekasi is the touching short film set in 1990s Australian suburbia.
The film follows Mona, a 10-year-old Tongan-Australian girl as she begins to realise that she is different to her single, white mum and her family. The story based on the Melbourne-based director Annelise Hickey’s own experiences is heartbreaking, yet wholesome. A mother-daughter story that addresses themes of family, cultural identity and belonging.
So far, the film has seen well-deserved success with Annelise winning Best Emerging Australian Filmmaker at the Melbourne International Film Festival and receiving a special mention for the Best Narrative Short at Tribeca Film Festival.
I spoke to Annelise about the ins and outs of her incredible directorial debut.
The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in June. I was able to watch the film as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival, where it had its Australian premiere. The film is currently premiering at film festivals around the world. To keep up to date on premieres, follow the Hafekasi Instagram.
Congratulations on the release of Hafekasi and the awards too! How does it feel to get so much recognition and support for your first short film?
To be honest it feels pretty surreal. The reason we made this film is because a bunch of people at my work were sitting at MIFF last year and we all thought that we should try to make a film in our hometown that might get into the festival. Then for it to really happen and have my first short to be internationally recognised and win awards is next level. I wasn’t expecting it all and I wasn’t expecting people to resonate with the film as much as they have. It’s all been incredible. I feel very lucky.
How was it having a story so personal be premiered at such a monumental film festival, like the Tribeca Film Festival?
Hafekasi took me a long time to write because it is so personal, and I thought that no one would want to watch a film about this subject matter. But what I’ve realised is that certain audiences are starving for that content, whether it be mixed kids, people who feel like they don’t look like their family or people who feel like they don’t fit in. Then to premiere it at Robert De Niro’s film festival is incredible, I couldn’t ask for anything more.
Let’s talk about Hafekasi, I watched it and loved it. What can you say about the film for people who haven’t watched it?
I don't want to give too much away, but Hafekasi is about Mona, a 10-year-old Tongan-Australian girl who begins to realise she's different to her single, white mum and family. Both mother and daughter navigate identity and belonging in 90s suburban Melbourne.
It's really about a child forging their own path and a parent trying to understand their child. Something I think we can all relate to.
What does the term ‘Hafekasi’ mean?
The most direct translation is half-caste, so a mixed-race person of Polynesian heritage. It’s similar to what we would call half-caste in Australia which traditionally is derogatory, but younger generations are reclaiming the word and using it in a proud way, which is cool.
“Yeah, as a kid you don’t know anything different, that’s just your life. It isn’t until you’re an adult when you understand what those thoughts and feelings were.”
Yeah definitely, there have definitely been negative and derogatory connections to those terms in the past. Do you want to touch on your relationship with the term?
When people meet me in Polynesian settings, where I meet Tongans or Tongans introduce me to other Tongans, sometimes I hear them talk in Tongan and hear them say hafekasi. I don’t know a lot of Tongan, but I know that word really well and I know when they’re talking about me. It is just a way of explaining and it doesn’t come from a place of anything negative. It just comes from a place of explaining in a very plain way; she looks mixed, I can’t put my finger on it but now I understand why.
As the film is based on your own experience, how was it for you to reflect on that period of your life?
Writing it I found was cathartic and good to go through. It was great to reflect on it and find visual ways to express that, thinking of ways to explain this feeling of what it is to be mixed race in 90s suburban Australia. I didn’t want it to be a film that was lots of talking, because if I remember me as a ten-year-old I didn’t talk a lot. I was just experiencing life and taking things as they came, so it was more about thinking about how that translates into visuals.
What I found challenging was on set, directing Belle [Izabelle Tokava] who plays the main character, Mona, who is based on myself, through scenes that were tricky. Having words that came out of my mouth, that were the feelings that I felt when I was a kid. For instance, there was a scene where Mona, is looking at herself in the mirror. I remember trying to direct Belle through it and Belle has a very positive view of her Polynesianness and who she is. She is a very proud and strong Polynesian girl. So, in that scene the character is supposed to be disappointed and thinking she doesn’t fit in. In those early takes Belle wasn’t quite getting there, because she is a beautiful kid, so why would she look in the mirror and be disappointed and feel as if she doesn’t fit in? In the direction I was giving her, I was saying, ‘Mona doesn’t like what she sees’. Hearing those words come out of my mouth was more confronting than I thought it would be because it was those deep repressed emotions from my childhood.
Did you feel as if you needed to be more hands-on in Belle’s acting, as it was your story she was telling?
Not really, there were certain scenes, that felt further away from who Belle is to what Mona was. This is the first time she ever acted. Being on camera was a new experience for her, but it kind of worked in my favour in the way that we lent into the things she felt more aligned with, in terms of her performance and who she is because she’s a real girl.
There were times like the mirror scene where I had to be more prescriptive and had to guide her. I never went in thinking this character needed to be 100 per cent me. I was always resigned to the fact that it was going to be a collaboration between Belle and me creating Mona to be whatever she was going to be on screen. It didn’t feel like I was telling her what to do the whole time, she had agency and was bringing her own creative ideas to it. She had some amazing ideas, we shot for three days and by the second day she had gotten into the flow of it and was learning from Laura Gordon, who plays the mum. She started picking up on how Laura was talking to me and bringing ideas to me in between takes, and she realised she didn’t just have to do what was on the script if she had an idea, she could always bring it up. I think that brings for a better performance too if it comes from the actor.
Oh, that’s amazing she did such a great job. Her acting felt real.
Yeah, she is amazing.
What was it like showing the film to your mum?
It’s really interesting, she said she’s still processing it. She first watched it at a cast and crew screening we had and someone in the audience asked her how she felt about the film. She got up and spoke, there was a pretty emotional moment in that, where she said she didn’t realise that was my experience and I was feeling like that. I have asked her a few times since then about how she feels, but she still wants to watch it a few times again to let it sink in. I know she is incredibly proud, her and my stepdad flew to New York to come to the international premiere. She doesn’t see it in a negative light at all, she knows that it is all just an expression of how I was feeling.
Yeah, she is seeing your emotions in a way she wouldn’t have been able to understand or even know about at the time.
Yeah, as a kid you don’t know anything different, that’s just your life. It isn’t until you’re an adult when you understand what those thoughts and feelings were. I wasn’t communicating with her as a ten-year-old, being like this is how I feel [laughs]. The amount of communication I would’ve been having was probably like, ‘mum, can I get the tracksuit pants everyone else is wearing’.
You spoke about trying to express the story visually briefly before. With the film being set in 90s Melbourne, did you find it hard to match the aesthetic in a way that worked for the film and conveyed the story?
When I was writing it, I was trying to be as practical as possible but knowing what the visuals would look like. I knew I needed two locations that I could kind of look like the 90s. The market I went to when I was a kid was Preston Market and there are still parts of it that are so ancient and haven’t changed since then. Then with the house, I knew we would be able to find that as there are so many of the houses that look of the time that are of that time. It was intentional in that way making those be the location.
For the look, in that it was the 90s there were parts that we had to film closer. In the market, we tried to crop a lot of things out that felt contemporary. There were a lot of people wearing masks on the day because the market had been a Covid hotspot. There were points where it was hard, and we had to be smart about it.
Being that the story was about a child, the feeling of not belonging is so internal and we aren’t hearing those thoughts, so being close with Mona was how we needed it to be to convey the narrative. That was able to work in our favour, keeping it feel like it was at the time it was supposed to be.
This is just a snippet of your life; are you wanting to make more shorts or even a longer film on your life in the future?
In terms of other shorts, I don’t want to make anything nearly as personal, but I think with any story or any character usually, it comes from a place of what you know. The shorts I’m writing now draw from something that is real to me but nowhere near as close as Hafekasi is to me. In saying that, we are trying to develop Hafekasi into a feature film, which will be really personal.
Oh, that’s amazing. Congrats! Would you want the same cast for the feature film?
I would love that! Especially because Laura and Belle are such a great mix, but it depends on what’s going on in their lives when we are making it.
When will people be able to watch the film?
We are in the first half of our festival year, so the film won’t be online until next year sometime.
What’s next for you from here?
I am going to the BFI in London, in October. Then to the Hawaiian International Film Festival, which I am really excited about, it’ll be great to meet other Polynesian filmmakers.
Do you have any last words and anyone you want to thank?
I want to thank everyone who worked on the film, all the cast and crew. Especially my partner Will Morrissey, who is one of my closest collaborators and reads all my scripts and watches all my edits. He is also Hafekasi in his own way, so he has a good understanding of the subject matter and story I am trying to tell. I want to thank my mum, the story is a mother-daughter story and I asked her initially if she would be okay with me making it and she’s been so supportive and open about it through the whole process. Last but not least, I want to thank Josie Baynes, my producer, the film wouldn’t have been made without her, so I am very thankful she came along with me on the journey, she just made it all happen. Producers are incredible, I don’t know how anyone does anything without a producer, she is incredible. There were some incredible people on that project and I’m really grateful for them all.
