Arts / Film

Filmmaker’s timely response to rise of One Nation

Mark Phillips

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A new documentary by a Brunswick film director provides a sharp rebuke to Pauline Hanson’s insistence that Australia should be a monocultural society.

Shared Table: Regional Heroes is a celebration of multiculturalism told through the eyes of several migrants who have settled in regional Victoria.

While production of the film began before the recent rise in opinion polls of Hanson and her anti-immigration One Nation party, it has landed on our screens at the same time as the height of her popularity after three decades on the national political scene.

The second collaboration between Brunswick director-screenwriter Nandita Chakraborty and producer Niru Tripathi, who lives in Glenroy, it is screening next week at Cinema Nova as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival.

Chakraborty has been shortlisted for the festival’s awards for best Melbourne documentary and best emerging director.

Shared Table: Regional Heroes follows the film crew as they visit members of the Karen community who endured years of persecution from the Burmese military before settling in Nhill in north-west Victoria; two young men now living in Shepparton after fleeing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan; and a Nepalese-born doctor who chose to practice in semi-rural Gippsland rather than Melbourne because it reminded him of home.

They also interview long-term residents of the towns who describe how migrants from wildly diverse backgrounds have been embraced by their communities.

Like their previous feature, Piquancy: Silent Heroes – which is streaming on SBS – Shared Table explores notions of migration, cultural identity and the contribution culturally and linguistically diverse people make to our community.

In both films, food serves as a common bond.

“For me, Shared Table is ultimately about humanity,” Chakraborty wrote in a recent article for the Filmink website.

“Every meal carries memory. Every migrant carries a story. And every shared table has the power to transform strangers into community. I hope audiences leave the film not only thinking about food, but also thinking about empathy, kindness, and the courage it takes to begin again.”

The subject matter resonates strongly in the current political climate both in Australia and overseas.

Just a few weeks ago, Hanson gave an incendiary speech at the National Press Club in Canberra during which she railed against the idea of Australia as a multicultural nation.

Chakraborty, who migrated to Australia from India 26 years ago, says while she did not set out to do so explicitly, her film acts as a counter-argument to the ideas espoused by Hanson and One Nation.

“Pauline Hanson can say what she wants to say, but monoculture is not suitable for a multicultural Australia,” she said.

“Australia is built on migration, built on the First Nations. If we can’t respect that, then there’s no place for anyone here.”

WATCH: Shared Table: Regional Heroes official trailer

Chakraborty said that as an Indian-Australian, she had always felt welcomed in Australia – until recently.

“It was always a friendly country,” she said.

“Yes, there were sparks of racism everywhere, but this has just gone to the height of negligence about people … My message to Pauline Hanson is that I also am Australian.

“I look like this, I talk like this, and I’m also Australian. I’m proud to be here as well.

“So, if you have a problem, that’s your problem and you solve it, but you’re not going to ride on migration to take votes.”

Shared Table was shot on a tiny budget over six months and completed late last year.

In the short time since, it has screened at Cannes in France and in June was one of 12 international films selected to be shown at the Mumbai International Film Festival. It has subsequently been picked up for theatrical distribution in India by Cineapolis.

“The film was so well received [in India] because often they hear the voices from Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, the big cities, but never from regional [Australia], and they just fell in love with the film,” Chakraborty said.

Recognition in India is particularly special for Chakraborty, who was born in Kolkata and grew up in New Delhi.

Her father, Dhiresh Kumar Chakraborty, was a famous name in the Indian film industry and was the producer of In Search of Famine, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 1981 Berlin Film Festival.

Chakraborty has lived in Brunswick for the past decade. She and producer Niru Tripathi were first introduced by a mutual acquaintance at Brunswick Library, where Chakraborty continues to work as a casual employee while studying for a Master’s at the Victorian College of the Arts.

She moved to Melbourne in 2000 while in her mid-20s and started a business here, but her life was changed in 2011 when she suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling 40 metres while rock climbing.

She turned to writing as part of her rehabilitation.

One of the results was Dirty Little Secrets, a memoir published in 2022.

Dirty Little Secrets has now been optioned by Enigma Films and Chakraborty is working on the screen adaptation.

Shared Table: Regional Heroes will screen at Cinema Nova as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival at 6.45pm on Tuesday, July 14. It will be followed with a live in-cinema Q&A session with the filmmakers.

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