IF you didn't know better you'd suspect Wanita was the wild figment of someone's warped imagination.
The self-proclaimed Australian "queen of honky tonk" is a country musician by night, sex worker by day and in between a complex character who can be erratic, chaotic and passionate.
Wanita's as much at home on stage entertaining crowds with her enchanting voice as she is sitting among homeless people, providing whatever help she can to lift them out of the gutter.
Naturally, Wanita Bahtiyar's life provides absorbing source material for a documentary. Newcastle writer-director Matthew Walker has produced an award-winning portrait of the country renegade's life.
I'm Wanita's follows her lifelong dream to become a country star and to record an album in the music mecca of Nashville, as she battles her demons which constantly threaten to derail her plans.
Walker met Wanita in 2013 when he was approached to make a promotional video. But after visiting the 40-something musician at her Tamworth home dubbed "Honkytonkville" he was captivated by her story and directed the short film Heart Of The Queen in 2015.
But the story wasn't complete. After securing funding from Screen Australia, Walker returned to Tamworth to chart Wanita's madcap plan to travel to the US and record in studios in Memphis, New Orleans and Nashville.
I'm Wanita has since won Best Australian Documentary at the 2021 Sydney Film Festival, Best Music Documentary at Britain's 2021 Raindance Festival and was nominated for the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards (AACTA Awards).
"It didn't really matter to me what she did," Walker says. "The more erratic and difficult the better, in some ways. I was just filming her and I wasn't pushing the story in any direction.
"I wasn't trying to overproduce it, I was just going along for the ride. Whatever Wanita did was fine by me.
"She's someone who says what she thinks at all times, basically. That's perfect for a documentary maker. Her erratic behaviour ends up with some of the best onscreen stuff, as does her triumphant transcendent behaviour when she's at her best performing."
Despite her immense talent - which is clearly articulated in Walker's film - Wanita has remained relatively unknown outside of Tamworth, where she's lived for 25 years.
The conservative Australian country music industry has mostly ignored Wanita and her music, which is inspired as a bygone era of Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams. Wanita believes her erratic behaviour - which she contributes to autism - and her resistance in "playing the game" has meant success has unfairly eluded her.
Walker says Wanita's lack of mainstream approval made her more intriguing.
"My point wasn't to take this person who I really believed in, because I didn't know her when I first met her," Walker says.
"My point was to follow someone who believed in themselves. Certainly the Australian country music industry is very conservative and you have a little box or a hole that you have to go through. Wanita was never going to 'play the game' as she says.
"She couldn't. She can't. By her very own nature she is unable to conform to someone else's expectations or play by the rules."
I'm Wanita is also hilarious in parts. In one scene where Wanita's manager Newcastle bluegrass artist Gleny Rae is introduced, she expresses her appreciation of her computer skills.
"I can't believe a person that can play so many instruments and sing with her integrity can actually operate a computer," Wanita says of Rae.
"For someone who's so grassroots, she's so soft cock. [Being] technological, I call that soft cockism."
Another moment shows an euphoric Wanita recording at Memphis' famed Sun Studios where she calls her Turkish husband Baba back in Tamworth. The unimpressed Baba, who holds little interest in her musical dreams, is more concerned about her transferring money to fix their car.
Wanita's compassion is also readily on display. In one scene she performs an impromptu cover of Loretta Lynn's The Darkest Day at Nashville Airport to lift the spirits of a woman, whose family was involved in car accident on their way to picking her up.
I'm Wanita is warts and all. Outside of the music it explores Wanita's estranged relationship with her daughter and her 20-year career as a sex worker.
"She said very early on that she had nothing to hide," Walker says. "Within the first minutes of filming her she got stuck into me for not getting in there amongst it enough.
"We were outside doing a dolly shot of her car and she called us a bunch of soft cocks and told us to 'get here amongst it and see if you can keep up'."
I'm Wanita screens at Charlestown Reading Cinemas on Thursday at 6.30pm, which includes a Q&A with Walker. Wanita will also perform at Lizotte's on February 17.
