‘Facing The Numbers:’ Kieran Satour & Tyson Perkins On Telling An Authentic First Nations Story With Their Breakout Hybrid Feature

Facing The Numbers by Kieran Satour and Tyson Perkins is one of the most unique propositions to come out of Australia in some time. Described as a “social impact campaign and film project,” the feature-length documentary explores the significant disadvantages First Nations people experience in Australia’s legal system. Recent data show that First Nations people experience disadvantages across all areas of Aussie life, including child protection, justice, health, housing and education. First Nations people make up around 3.3% of the general population, but 37% of the prison population. The data is stark, but as the doc’s title suggests, Satour and Perkins are interested in more than just listing these figures. Watch on Deadline “The statistics tell one story. We tell another,” the film’s opening frame reads. Structured as a six-part anthology, Facing The Numbers explores these disparities through the real-life stories of First Nations people using a bold mix of dance, poetry, and spoken word. Satour and Perkins wrote and directed the film together. Perkins also served as the DoP. Satour produced alongside Ramona Telecican. The film debuted earlier this year at the Melbourne Film Festival before screening across the Aussie circuit and premiering at the Sydney Opera House. The doc will screen on NITV in Australia on November 15 and will later be repackaged for distribution on social platforms. Below, Satour and Perkins speak with Deadline about how they developed the anthology film and their bold plans for its release. DEADLINE: This film has a very unique structure. How did you develop this approach to the material? TYSON PERKINS: This kind of subject matter is often portrayed in a very academic way on film. It tends to take the form of talking-head interviews and fairly basic re-creations, which don’t get close to the emotional point of view—or the emotional suffering—that many victims of police brutality go through. We started with that as our aim, and this little, unusual thing came out of it. DEADLINE: I read this started as a short project and then expanded. Is that right? PERKINS: It was as much about treating the subject matter in a fresh way as it was about using a fresh format. For us, that format was short-form and shareable online. It came as a response to the Black Lives Matter movement. We were watching what was happening in America from Australia and the artistic responses that came out of it—not the news coverage, but the things that appeared on our Instagram feeds. It prompted Kieran and me to think about Australia. Some of our statistics on incarceration, youth incarceration, male suicide, and deaths in custody are among the worst in the world. We wanted to take some of those subjects and statistics and frame them through the short-form, viral storytelling many African American artists in the U.S. were using. By “viral,” we didn’t necessarily mean that it had to go viral; we meant something short, shareable, and to the point. As happens with films, once we delved into the individual subjects and the stories, they expanded. We realised there was a way to tell the story of this country—its institutional racism, its history of oppression and its ongoing oppression—through these personal, first-hand stories. We thought we had six separate subject films, but when we put them together, they formed a truthful picture of what Aboriginal people face in this country. DEADLINE: You incorporate several different art forms in the film. There’s dance, spoken word. But it feels seamless. How did you get it to work? KIERAN SATOUR: One of the amazing things about Facing the Numbers is that so many First Nations artists came together to tell this story. The spoken word, poetry, and dancing feel seamless because everyone is telling the same story. We’re telling multiple separate stories, but they represent a collective Aboriginal experience. Tyson and I were lucky to work with all these incredible creatives. DEADLINE: How have people been responding to the film, especially in Australia? SATOUR: People have been responding really well. We premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival and had a great turnout. About 75% of tickets were sold for both screenings. We had standing ovations, and the Letterboxd reviews came in almost immediately after the first screening. Nothing was under four stars, and the reviews were glowing. We screened at the Darwin International Film Festival. My sister lives in Darwin. She’s also a co-founder of the production company and an executive producer on the film. She told me that people have been stopping her in Darwin to talk about Facing the Numbers because they’d been at the screening. It’s been amazing. DEADLINE: Where did you find your participants? SATOUR: During the global movement after George Floyd’s murder, people were sharing their stories online, and we found some of these stories through social media. Geoffrey Johnson is one example. Otherwise, we were doing research and development, trying to find stories that spoke to this collective experience. It came down to meetings and phone calls. PERKINS: It’s important to mention that it would not be difficult to find thousands of stories like these. Thousands of Aboriginal people have direct descendants who were taken during the Stolen Generations or sent to schools like Kinchela Boys’ Home. Probably every Aboriginal family knows someone who has been a victim of police brutality, whether in their own family or a family they know. The stories we chose are told by extremely courageous people. It takes strength to repeat your story on camera, allow it to be filmed, and make it public. But one of the key messages of the film is that these experiences are extraordinarily common—in people’s lives and statistically. DEADLINE: How did you build this production? I can’t imagine the Australian public funding system was jumping to invest in something like this. Or maybe I’m wrong. SATOUR: It was funded through a digital-series, online-production fund at Screen Australia, our national public screen-funding body. That fund doesn’t even exist anymore. The project was never meant to be a feature film. We made the anthology into a feature partly because that helped us unlock extra funding and become eligible for a significant tax offset. Production went through a few phases. At the end of the first phase, we had two strong rough cuts, which we used to secure more funding. We received a little more from the national broadcasting funding body, then a broadcaster attached through a pre-sale, and we brought in philanthropic support. It was a struggle, but we got there. A film like this doesn’t get made without the goodwill of philanthropists, but also without all the work everyone put into those first two rough cuts. They were strong, and I think the project sold itself from there. DEADLINE: How will it be distributed? I know you’re screening at the Sydney Opera House, which is wonderful. Do you have plans for international screenings? In the UK and U.S., people involved in solidarity movements would be intrigued to hear from you and see a film like this. SATOUR: Totally. In terms of craft, we were inspired by global Black filmmakers. Steve McQueen’s Small Axe was a huge reference for us, as was Spike Lee. We both admire the American director Khalil Joseph. We’re connecting with global Black and brown movements because we’re facing similar issues everywhere: over-policing, incarceration, and child removal. We’re still waiting to find out where the international premiere will be. In Australia, we’re doing a film-festival run, and then the film will be broadcast on NITV, the National Indigenous Television Network, which sits under SBS, our multicultural public broadcaster. The digital release will follow once the holdbacks for the national TV broadcast are over. The films will also be released online through a microsite. A key partner is Common Ground, an Aboriginal-run and Aboriginal-led organisation focused on education. They’re running our impact campaign. The organisation’s founder, Rona Glynn-McDonald, is Warwick Thornton’s daughter, so filmmaking is in her blood. We’re excited to get these stories out digitally and reach younger people who may not watch television or attend film festivals, and to connect with an audience that isn’t already converted. PERKINS: For me, the online release is what I’m most excited about. In film and television now, you see people who have built audiences on YouTube or Instagram bringing those audiences into more traditional film and TV. The ideal outcome would be for some of the storytellers to experience justice—whether for a family member’s death or, in Uncle Widdy’s case, by having more of the public learn what happened to him at Kinchela Boys’ Home. Not many people know that thousands of children went through that school or what happened to them. The survivors are trying to reclaim the land where the school stood. Once the films have been shared and completed their festival runs, I hope some of those outcomes can begin to happen. I’m really excited about that.