Beneath Clouds: making an international mark.

Damian lives in Moree in the northwest of New South Wales. He describes it as a rough outback town with little hope or opportunity. "Drugs, thieving, fighting, all kinds of shit," he says. "Stolen cars every week; bag snatchers, fights. It’s not a good place unless you know everybody and how it works. You’ve got to blend in."

One day towards the end of 2000, Damian was hanging out with about a dozen of his mates in a run down area of the township. They were taking turns riding a motorbike when filmmaker Ivan Sen pulled up in his car. "He just pulled up, jumped out and walked straight up and said, ‘Do you want to make a movie?’" recalls Damian. "He didn’t know who I was or nothing about me."

Ivan had been driving around northwest NSW looking for two young Aboriginals to fill the lead roles in his forthcoming feature. He says that given the numbers of professional Aboriginal actors in this country, he had no choice but to cast non-actors. "It was just impossible to find some Koori, Murray actors with the specific presence that I was after," he says. "I needed them to look quite hardened on the outside and quite tough but also quite attractive at the same time."

"He had the perfect look," explains Ivan of his decision to cast Damian. "It was aggressive but also had another quality. It was pushing and pulling me at the same time."

For Damian it was the chance of a lifetime. "I had nothing coming my way at that time, nothing even going for me until Ivan came along and plucked me out of the blue and made something out of me," he says.

Unsurprisingly, Damian was initially suspicious of Ivan’s offer. "I thought it was bullshit at first," he says, laughing. "He thought it was a porno!" jokes Ivan. But the appeal of being a movie star prompted Damian to overcome his trepidation and to read for the part. "I ran lines with Damian the next day," says Ivan. "My relief was enormous. His vocal ability was brilliant, his accent was strong and his non verbal ability was also excellent."

Beneath Clouds follows the journey of two unlikely traveling companions as they hitchhike from Moree to Sydney. Vaughn is a surly young Aboriginal who breaks out of detention to see his dying mother. Lena is a teenager running away from her Aboriginal background in search of her Irish father. Identity, the search for heritage and love, mixed in with a heady dose of aggression and racial tension make up the body of indigenous filmmaker Ivan Sen’s debut.

Ivan Sen based the story around his own experience of growing up with mixed heritage. "I grew up with my mum in an indigenous community in Tamworth and sometimes I didn’t really feel like I belonged there," he says. "All my cousins, their parents were both black and sometimes they’d call me Wog or stuff like that. Sometimes I felt like jumping on a bus and trying to find my Dad and just get away from the whole thing."

Ivan based the character of Vaughn around his cousin of the same name. "The first thing he got caught for was stealing some chewing gum and the last thing he got caught for was home invasion and he got nine years," he says.

Damian immediately identified with the character. "He doesn’t take no shit from no one because he was locked up all the time," he says in his strong Aboriginal accent. "I’ve been there, I’ve done it all. Family, cousins and mates, they’ve all been there. Someone out of each family is locked up, and if not one, then four or five."

Both of the central characters are quite aggressive, which Ivan attributes to the defence mechanism many indigenous people have learnt to use to cope with their harsh environment. "The best way to survive is to be the first person to lash out," Ivan explains. "When you’re in a fight, you don’t wait for the first punch. Just walk up an drop ‘em."

Considering his life experience, Damian was a natural. "Damian really responded when there was any kind of aggression called for," Ivan says. "He got into that quite easily, especially when the police were around, because of his own personal experiences. He saw it as a chance to get back at them."

Damian’s face breaks into a wide grin as he recalls filming a scene where the Vaughn character fights with a policeman. "I thought about it and I booted him up the ribs the hardest I could," he says laughing. "I seen the uniform and just went BOOM!"

Dannielle Hall, who plays Lena, also identified strongly with her on screen persona’s search for heritage. "My mum and dad split when I was younger," she says. "My mum is Aboriginal and my dad is white. When they split up you’ve got two different ways of seeing things. It’s just something inside of you."

Ivan found Dannielle through his uncle, who had worked with her on a TAFE video. "I done drama in school but nothing too serious," says Dannielle. "I didn’t know what to think when Ivan asked me."

Dannielle says her first day on set was nerve racking. "It was real scary and I was real nervous," she says. "I used to hate being on camera. But after a while you just forget that and try and blank the camera out."

Beneath Clouds premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. "It was the first time I’d seen the film with an audience," says Ivan of watching the film with a 2000-strong crowd. "They were amazing, they really took the characters on board and fell in love with them. At the end of the film they just applauded for minutes and minutes and when I got up on stage they wouldn’t stop," he says.

Beneath Clouds won the Best Debut Feature award at the festival. The jury described the film as "an outstanding work that ultilises all cinematic elements with a great discipline and an artistry to touch our souls."

As if in testament to Ivan’s decision to use non-actors in the film, Dannielle received the Best New Actress award. Dannielle didn’t attend the festival and didn’t even know she’d won until the next day. "Ivan rung me up and he was telling (me) he went to Berlin and all that and then he goes, ‘by the way, you won the award.’ I thought he was joking. He had to convince me. After he hung up, that’s when it sunk in that I really did win the award. Ivan wouldn’t ring me up and tell me that for nothing."