Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. If you harbour ambitions of being a filmmaker, there are some positives to having a director as a parent. But, says India Donaldson, daughter of Ballarat-born, New Zealand-trained, Hollywood-famous Roger Donaldson, whose 1977 debut feature Sleeping Dogs featured a young Sam Neill in one of his first roles, “there’s two sides to that coin”.
“Growing up watching him make films, there’s a great luxury to that,” says Donaldson, whose own debut, Good One , will screen at the Melbourne International Film Festival . “I got to see that it was possible, and a viable way to make a life, so in some ways it exposed me to this idea that filmmaking was accessible. But also, I had a very specific idea of what it meant to be a filmmaker.
” India Donaldson was well into her 30s before she directed her first feature film. It took Donaldson time to find her own voice, and the confidence to step out of her father’s shadow. Through her 20s, she worked in the fashion industry, developing knitted textiles.
She made her first short in 2018. She brings her feature to Melbourne – the city where she spent a few months after graduating from college, while her father was editing a film here – aged 39. “My dad always encouraged our creative pursuits, but I think it was my own fear and my own trepidation around pursuing it, and finding the things I wanted to say [that took time],” she says.
James Le Gros and Lily Colli.