Chance meets with film legends set director without a mentor on her path

Chantelle Murray grew up in a pearl diving family in Broome, Western Australia – but she knew it was not a life for her.

Her Indigenous mother was a pearl diver who became a teacher in the remote town of Djarindjin. Her non-Indigenous father, who could not read or write until he met her mother, was a pearl diver who became a skipper on a boat.

“I didn’t want to be under the water for, like, eight-hour shifts. It just seems lonely to me”: Chantelle Murray, who directed The Lost Tiger.Credit: Reuben Smith.

However, Murray was not keen to spend her life at sea.

“I worked as a deckie, then I didn’t want to dive,” she says. “I didn’t want to be under the water for, like, eight-hour shifts. It just seems lonely to me.”

Instead, Murray, a Bardi-Bunial woman living in Brisbane, turned her childhood obsession with shooting short films on her stepdad’s video camera into a career.

Her first feature film, the children’s animation The Lost Tiger, has just opened in cinemas.

It’s about an abandoned Tasmanian Tiger, Teo, raised in a wrestling-mad family of kangaroos, who eventually connects with his heritage. Thomas Weatherall (Heartbreak High) voices Teo. Jimi Bani, Nakkiah Lui, Rhys Darby and Celeste Barber play other native animals.

After studying filmmaking in Brisbane, Murray made the 2021 animated short Jarli, about an Aboriginal girl who dreams of going into space.

“When they brought up the idea of Tiger to me, I absolutely loved it,” she says. “We just reworked it and found my voice to bring out Teo.”

Murray, 36, thinks she may be the first Indigenous director of an Australian animated feature film.

“The only reason I know this is I went searching for an Indigenous mentor and couldn’t find one,” she says.

As she worked towards her first feature, Murray had directing attachments that allowed her to shadow Taika Waititi on Thor: Ragnarok and Baz Luhrmann on Elvis.

The abandoned Tasmanian Tiger, Teo, who gets the chance to connect with his heritage in The Lost Tiger. Credit: Maslow

“Taika is so connected to being Indigenous and so nurturing to Indigenous,” she says. “So was Baz by the way.

“They’re really quite gentle and kind with their time. The people at the tippy top top, those mob, they are the most generous and kindest and most open.”

Their most valuable lesson was that every director has their own voice: “Let it shine and push it as much as you can because that’s what we come to the cinema to see.”

Murray’s career almost began much earlier when director Phillip Noyce had to decide between her and her cousin Everlyn Sampi to cast Molly, the oldest of three sisters on an epic trek home in the acclaimed drama Rabbit Proof Fence.

“He just said I was too white and too pretty but contact me one day if you’re still in the industry,” she says. “I was 10 and I wanted to be in anything that came to the Kimberleys.

“I contacted him when I was 25 and said, ‘I’ve done my film school, I’ve done all [these films]. I’d love to come work for you’. And he was like, ‘yep, cool, come over to America’, so I worked with him for a couple of months.”

The wrestling-mad kangaroo triplets in The Lost Tiger.Credit: Maslow

Murray made The Lost Tiger while having a baby, a daughter now 10 months old, to add to a 12-year-old stepson and a three-year-old son.

“They had to lock me out of the room after I gave birth because I was still calling and messaging,” she says. “They made me have a month off, but I was still working. I couldn’t help it.

“I love what I do. And I love my babies too, but they’re fine. A newborn sleeps for ages.”

While less lonely than pearl diving, Murray has found that filmmaking is also about going deep and bringing something beautiful to the world.

And she believes Indigenous Australians can use computer animation to tell their stories.

“Because we’re an oral lineage, that’s how we can pass knowledge down,” Murray says. “Now we can capture it in a magical way and [show] the way we see the world by using these advanced, amazing technologies.”

The Lost Tiger is the final film in a shared universe of animated features, called Tales From Sanctuary City, made by Brisbane production company Like A Photon Creative. The others are The Wishmas Tree (2019), Combat Wombat (2020), Daisy Quokka (2021), Combat Wombat: Back 2 Back (2023) and The Sloth Lane (2024).

Murray’s instalment is about finding out where you belong.

“My dad, who’s not Indigenous, it wasn’t until he found my mum and found my mob that he finally felt at home and who he was and at peace,” she says. “Everyone deserves to find out where they belong, regardless of what race you are.”

The Lost Tiger is in cinemas now.

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