Beats Picking Tomatoes

Wellington-based filmmaker Tusi Tumasese, 35, director of Oscar-nominated feature The Orator, explains to The West Australian why he left Samoa at the age of 18. “My mum sent me over to New Zealand because I was getting into trouble,” Tumasese says. “I was working in my dad’s mechanic shop and I bred my own pigs because I wanted to be a farmer. When my neighbour ate all my pigs I left.” He found work in New Zealand picking tomatoes. “Eventually I got lucky and studied film at the University of Waikato,” he said. After his short film Sacred Spaces screened at the 2010 NZ Film Festival and then around the world, Tamasese was able to make his first feature. “There’s no industry in Samoa so we had to take everything there and we had to wait four days to watch the rushes to come back from New Zealand.”