The idea of intergenerational trauma is introduced early in Melbourne-based filmmaker Aaron Wilson’s emotionally soaring second feature Little Tornadoes. As starfields and storm clouds dance over a rugged landscape alive with insect and bird calls, an Italian woman’s narration dispels the myth of Terra Nullius. “I was told that I was coming to a new world when I first arrived here,” she says, before adding of the spirits that she can feel close, “I knew in my bones these were ancient ghosts. It was not a new world at all.”
, this is an intimate and aching story of the ties that bind us to a difficult past. Co-written by The Slap and Dead Europe author Christos Tsiolkas, it shares his particular focus on wounded masculinity, dislocation and the migrant experience. Balibo star Mark Leonard Winter plays emotionally reserved factory worker Leo, who hasn’t processed the startling death of his mother when he was a young lad. Many years later, his wife takes off to Melbourne, never to return to the quiet rural town where Leo seems frozen in time. As Leo struggles to look after his young daughter and son, his dad (Robert Menzies, Glitch) is nursing his own psychological wounds and offers little help. All of which brings Leo’s Italian colleague (Fabio Motta) to recommend his sister Maria (Silvia Colloca) help Leo around the house. She sees life and death in very different ways.
The film was actually shot 10 years ago, around the same time as Wilson’s WWII-set drama , and the two are inextricably connected. “I had this greater idea in my head; let’s call it this: the triple happiness project,” Wilson says of what he intends to be a trilogy. “It’s about three generations of one rural Australian family, and the resonant effects of war and trauma across those generations.”
Jim is an Australian fighter pilot downed in the jungles of Japanese-held Singapore during the WWII-set Canopy. “Then, 30 years later in 1971, we’re looking at his son and his struggles.”
Between his distant father and the loss of his mother, Leo has become stuck. If Canopy is about the aftereffect of war on those that came back and couldn’t talk about it, then Little Tornadoes teases out the impact on their children. “How do we explore that idea of the Australian male who doesn’t really know how to communicate, and the frustration, torment and vulnerability he feels?”
Aaron Wilson on set. Source: SBS
Wilson understands this struggle. He grew up in the same tiny little town, Tocumwal, on the Victorian border with New South Wales in which Little Tornadoes was shot, though granted a decade or so later than the film is set. “People in any country town across Australia will see these issues in their own families, but there’s also a lot of me in the story,” Wilson says. “For me, it was very hard to grow up in a world where you’re taught how to be a man. You don’t say much, you keep your head down, you don’t whinge, and that bleeds into you as an adult. How do you learn to deal with your emotions and process things without resorting to aggression or alcohol, or bullying people who are different?”
Beautifully shot by returning cinematographer Stefan Duscio – who also worked on the TV adaptation of Tsiolkas’ novel Barracuda, Eric Bana movie The Dry and two Beyoncé videos – the film also shares, with Canopy, a haunting sound design. “Sound, for me, is such a strong character, because growing up in this small town, the endless feeling of the world around you is such an overwhelming presence. It can’t help but affect everybody, and a lot of that is the sound of animals at night.”
Set in the 1970s, 'Little Tornadoes' was shot in the border town of Tocumwal where Wilson grew up. Source: SBS
Like many Australian filmmakers before him, Wilson encountered a lot of hurdles getting the finances together to finish Little Tornadoes. When he reached out to Tsiolkas near the end of the ten-year process, the author helped tease out the character of Maria through her haunting monologues. “Pretty soon we began walking in parks, during lockdown with masks and coffees, and he had some great insights.”
Tsiolkas’ parents are Greek migrants who share certain cultural perspectives with Little Tornadoes’ Italian characters: most notably, shock at how dirty and dishevelled we allow gravestones to become, and our disconnect from the dead. “He understands, through his parents’ eyes, what it must have been like, coming to this foreign land, and trying to make sense of this alien world,” Wilson says. “But at the same time, he grew up here, so he’s kind of looking at Leo, this man who can’t speak to anyone, and then also at Maria, who we hear talk about this world, but don’t see for a while. So she’s almost like this spiritual presence, guiding us into the story in this mysterious way.”
Wilson relished working with the author. “It was so much fun and a rigorous creative process. It was one of the most rewarding things in my life, and I really want to collaborate with him further. Apart from enriching the film, it just gave me, as an artist, a greater perspective on how I go about making my work.”
While Wilson had been looking forward to introducing Little Tornadoes to an audience in the salubrious surrounds of Melbourne’s Capitol Theatre, COVID-19 had other ideas. The film has now . While we wait for a cinema release later in the year, Wilson hopes viewers can still connect with the story online in a visceral way.
“We need to maintain cinema, because it’s this great communal space where we can connect with each other, share stories and have discussions. And it’s not to say you can’t do that with streaming, but when you do it communally, it promotes discussion straightaway. So what I’m really hoping is, if people are watching it online, I would encourage them to find me on social media and then let me know their thoughts.”
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