When Australian actor Jillian Nguyen watched Everything Everywhere All at Once command Hollywood's biggest stage at the Oscars this week, she felt a flood of emotions.
"Like every other Asian person, I've just been crying," Nguyen said.
"If the tears aren't coming, I'm just overwhelmed with so much joy and so much hope."
Everything Everywhere All at Once took the gong in seven categories at the 95th Academy Awards and took home the coveted prize for best picture.
Now, Australian actors and filmmakers from diverse backgrounds are pointing out the lack of representation back home and urging the local industry to catch up.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a genre-blending film about an immigrant family in the United States.
Michelle Yeoh made history as the first Asian woman to win best actress. Ke Huy Quan won for best supporting actor.
It reminded Nguyen of her parents, who fled Vietnam by sea and spent five and a half years on island refugee camp Sungai Besi in Malaysia, where Nguyen was born.
"It felt like seeing my own parents live out their parallel dreams, which was to be artists or sportspeople, so it just feels like my family realising their dreams," she said.
Nguyen is best known for starring in the SBS four-part supernatural series Hungry Ghosts, the ABC's 1970s beach drama Barons, and as a lead in the 2022 sci-fi film Loveland.
When finishing her Arts degree at the University of Melbourne, she felt uninspired to pursue acting until she undertook an Asian film subject in her final year.
"Watching In the Mood for Love and Zhang Yimou films, that's when I felt seen and said, 'Ok, I can follow my dreams'," she said.
"That was the life-changing moment."
The 30-year-old said Australia's entertainment industry does not boast its diversity triumphs and is struggling to keep up with Hollywood.
"Australia is very, very behind," she said.
Actors of Asian descent made up 9 per cent of cast and crew roles in Australia, compared to making up roughly 17.4 per cent of the broader population, according to findings between 2021 and 2022 in an interim report by the Screen Diversity Inclusion Network.
"The industry needs a whole shake-up," Nguyen said.
Similar picture behind the camera
Australian-born filmmaker Nicole Ma grew up in Hong Kong and Singapore until she travelled to New York on a holiday in 1985 and snapped up one of her first jobs in film.
To her surprise, she recalled being surrounded by role models.
"There were so many Asian women who were working in the industry," she said.
"I'd describe the surprise I felt in that moment to the feeling of seeing Michelle Yeoh win best actress."
Ma produced films in the United States for 13 years before returning to Australia, where she described a scene dominated by men and people of Anglo-Celtic backgrounds.
"It was very lonely," she said.
"I didn't see anyone who looked like me working in film."
Australia in the 1990s was more of a "cottage industry" compared to America, not gushing with opportunities according to Ma.
She eventually launched her career creating documentaries and working alongside First Nations people in productions such as Dances of Ecstasy and Putuparri and the Rainmakers.
Ma started working on her first screenplay — a fictional story based on her great-grandmother's story of migrating to a remote tin mine in Tasmania.
However, she admitted it would have been a struggle two decades ago to pitch this personal story to a producer.
"It didn't occur to me to work on this story; it didn't even actually interest me," she said.
Ma said she was buoyed by the growing number of Asian-Australian storytellers and diverse talents directing, producing, shooting, and editing films.
According to the 2022 A Wider Lens report, 13 per cent of Australia's camera workforce identifies as non-European.
The report calls the industry "white, older, and more male-dominated than the rest of the working population".
"The industry is still pretty white, but that means I need to get off my backside and do something about it," said Ma.
Huge appetite for diversity
Diversity Arts Australia CEO Lena Nahlous always identified with marginalised cultures on screen.
As an Arab-Australian with migrant parents, she wants to see non-mainstream stories unfurl on television.
"We want to see representations of ourselves on screen," she said.
"Millions of Australians have at least one migrant parent, so there is a huge appetite for diversity."
Ms Nahlous said there were "systemic inequalities" that continued to lock people out of the industry.
As a result, she said the film and television industry has missed out on telling diverse stories.
"There is still an under-representation of culturally diverse people on screen."
In 2019, Diversity Arts Australia spearheaded a survey that found 9 per cent of nearly 200 arts leaders identified as culturally and linguistically diverse.
Half of the cultural organisations had no one with culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in a leadership role, including board members, executives, and CEOs.
Diversity Arts has pushed for a minimum diversity standard for the entertainment industry.
The equity test would be applied to companies applying for grant funding for creative projects.
The peak funding body for film and television, Screen Australia, is due to release an updated report card on the industry's diversity later this year.
Its previous snapshot Seeing Ourselves was published in 2016.
Many have heralded the 95th Academy Awards as a watershed moment of diversity success.
For Nguyen, the buzz and excitement of celebrating Asian representation cannot fade, otherwise, the power of the moment could slip away.
"I really hope that with the success of Everything Everywhere All at Once, Australia takes more chances in nurturing and fostering diverse talent," she said.
"We can't let this be a 15-second thing".
