For the creators of the First Nations film We Are Still Here, the arrival of James Cook at Sydney’s Botany Bay 252 years ago is not the whole story.
The film, an anthology of storylines woven together from 1,000 years ago in pre-colonised Australia to a dystopian future, teamed 10 directors and 11 screenwriters in six languages, a first for Australian cinema.
The film will premiere tonight, as the gala opening feature at the Sydney Film Festival, at the State Theatre to a crowd of 2,000 people.
Producer Mitchell Stanley, a Wiradjuri man from Sydney, said the film was unlike anything he had worked on.
"There was nothing in any of our film knowledge from an Indigenous perspective to respond to that arrival," Stanley said.
"We have all these perspectives and heroes that are more than just colonisation," he said.
"There were points where we were thinking, 'Woah are you going to do that? Are you going to write that? That's crazy, that's never been done in Australia,' and the film has benefited 10-fold from taking those risks."
Those risks include an animated storyline within the film and what Stanley calls a blend of laugh-out-loud comedy and tear-jerking drama.
The film brings together a range of genres — animation, sci-fi, romantic comedy and period drama.
The Australian-New Zealand co-production includes the work of directors Beck Cole and Danielle MacLean from Australia and Mario Gaoa from New Zealand filmed during Australia's COVID border closures.
During filming, actor Clarence Ryan was temporarily denied access to the Northern Territory as he travelled from Perth to Alice Springs.
"We're on set and the announcement had just come out that the NT government was shutting down the borders to WA," Stanley said.
"While we had one shoot going on, we just thought our next shoot was about to fall under because we're about to lose our talent."
The drama of border closures gave the producer, who has been in the industry for 14 years, an added stress along with the "weight" of responsibility to culture.
"You were always reminded throughout production and the edit of the importance and the gravity of what it was that we were doing and the weight that we were carrying to make sure that this had to be not good, but great," Stanley said.
"The chapters, they're all like my children. It's the one film and it is the one baby growing up to being that old now."
Opening night will be the first time Stanley is able to see the entire team who worked on the film, and will share the experience with a crowd at the Sydney Film Festival.
"The film is for mob, it's for me and those people like me who see themselves in the stories," he said.
"It's the first time we'll see each other and say, 'Let's all sit down and watch it with 2,000 other people.'"
