ABC ME’s Girls Season to Feature Female-Led Films

The ABC and Screen Australia have selected three documentaries and two dramas from female creators that are slated for broadcast on ABC ME this fall during the Girls season joint funding initiative.

One of the documentaries is Shame, which follows a 12-year-old girl struggling with embarrassment as she tries to learn the Noongar language of her Indigenous Australian ancestors to honor her family and culture. The doc is created, written and directed by Karla Hart. It is produced by Paloma Bartsch.

Another documentary is The Funny Ones, about Aussie girls who dream of becoming comedy performers. The film is created and produced by Belinda Dean and directed by Genevieve Bailey. Then there is A Field Guide to Being a 12-Year-Old Girl, which asks a dozen female preteens to investigate their own species in a combination of theater and documentary. That title is produced by Katrina Lucas and written and directed by Tilda Cobham-Hervey.

The dramas that have been chosen are Summer’s Day (produced by Di Robertson; written and directed by Hattie Dalton), centered on a girl who is trying to make sense of her maturing body after she gets her period, and First Day (produced by Kirsty Stark; written and directed by Julie Kalceff), about a teen who is attending school for the first time as a female.

Production has begun on all five titles. Each team has been given $80,000 to make their project and are being mentored by filmmaking experts, with editorial guidance from Jan Stradling and Libbie Doherty of ABC Children’s TV and Nerida Moore of Screen Australia.

The Girls season will debut on ABC ME, the ABC ME app and ABC iview on October 11, which is the UN’s International Day of the Girl.

Michael Carrington, ABC’s head of children’s television, commented: “The ABC would like to congratulate these five creative teams. Their proposed film ideas not only capture the heart of what it’s like being a 12-year-old girl in Australia today but also represent the incredibly wide-ranging spectrum of diversity of Australian children, which was a key part of this proposition. We look forward to sharing their vision with our ABC ME audience later this year.

“The caliber of entries received was incredible, proof once again that there are many extremely talented Australian female content makers ready to lead the way with fresh, innovative and compelling stories.”

Sally Caplan, the head of production at Screen Australia, added: “The quality of submissions for the ABC Girls season was extraordinary, and we were bowled over by the diversity, range of perspectives and stories that were presented to us. The five bold, imaginative projects selected are not only from new creative voices, but promise to reveal, dissect and perhaps reconsider the realities of being a young girl in Australia today.”