by Dov Kornits
A blessing and a curse, digital technology and government legislated tax offsets have made the formerly gargantuan task of making a feature film accessible to more Australians than ever. Cursed because we have never had so many films produced and not enough appetite from the cinemas, streamers and broadcasters, who hold so much power in getting eyeballs on the films. Blessed is the fact that out of the glut of films, there are true gems being produced, such as Gabriel Carrubba’s authentic and affecting coming of age, coming out drama Sunflower.
“I started out as an actor,” Gabriel tells us. “I dropped out of high school towards the end of year 11 and studied acting. I booked my first role on a show called Glitch, a guest spot. I slowly fell out of love with acting. And then I saw The 400 Blows. It was probably the first film that really moved me that much to make me realise that I want to make films. Reading about how semi-autobiographical that was for [Francois] Truffaut, he’s written and directed something that’s really, really personal and it feels real and authentic. I remember thinking, ‘I’d love to do that one day’.”
It’s appropriate that Gabriel Carrubba cites a French New Wave film, because that late 1950 – late 1960s movement also produced a flood of films, many experimental, and a higher than average ratio of truly iconic classics that have stood the test of time, such as The 400 Blows.
“It was really just not wanting to wait around,” Gabriel says about making Sunflower independently with his producing partner Zane Borg. “I don’t think we were actually eligible for funding through any of the government bodies at the time. I don’t think I had enough credits in order to actually apply.
“When I started writing this film, I didn’t think I was going to actually ever have the opportunity to make it. I didn’t think making a feature was possible unless you had millions and millions of dollars. I just wrote it as a way to get things off my chest. The majority of the film is based on my own experiences. I actually remember speaking to my partner about this. We were on a holiday, and it was just before Covid hit, and I was quite depressed, struggling to move through some things that had happened in my youth. And he just said to me, ‘why don’t you just write it? Just start writing things that happened as a way to get it off your chest’. And that’s how it begun.
“I started writing scenes individually, just memories in no particular order. And slowly, I figured out that there’s a cohesive narrative here.
“I wasn’t trying to make it a coming out story necessarily. I was just writing what had happened to me. I think these stories are always going to be a thing, unless something drastically changes within society; until the coming out narrative is the same for queer people as it is for heterosexual people, I don’t think that these stories are going to disappear. I’d like to see it normalised and people not have to come out; that it not even be a thing … I’d love that, but I think as long as people continue to be traumatised by their youth and not feel like they can fit in, there will always be filmmakers wanting to tell their stories. And they’ve explored it in different ways. Sunflower is very realistic, but there are other stories that explore coming out within genres as well.”
One of the most refreshing things about Sunflower is that it doesn’t look or feel like most Australian films. It could be because Gabriel didn’t attend one of the top film schools, or it could just be a reaction to what the young filmmaker was seeing on our screens.
“I think a lot of the films that were coming out of this country felt like they were loaded with, ‘come to Australia’. It almost felt like the landscape was more important than the characters and the story. We want to make universal stories that could happen anywhere in the world.”
Sunflower is in cinemas 4 July 2024
