They say you should write what you know and that is a motto that award-winning Australian writer/director Serhat Caradee has taken to heart with his debut feature film ‘Cedar Boys’. A film which follows the story of a young Lebanese-Australian man, named Tarek, and his friends who dream of a better life but feel they are kept back by their lives in the outer western suburbs of Sydney.
I catch up with Serhat on a cold, wet Melbourne morning. He is just finishing his breakfast and explains ‘We caught the red eye flight down. We had a screening of Cedar Boys for the cast and crew last night… the main thing was they enjoyed it.’ Despite his tiredness Serhat is only too happy (and enthusiastic) to talk about his film.
He starts by telling me what his aim was with the film and why it was such a personal film. ‘I really do think that this is the story of an outsider. He feels like he doesn’t fit in. I was able to base all the personality traits of the characters on friends who grew up with the culture. I wanted to show the audience what it is like to be inside this world but at the same time make this an entertaining story that the audience would enjoy.
So where did such an interesting title come from? ‘Three or four years ago in Lebanon there was an uprising called the Cedar Revolution. It was a revolution of Lebanese activists standing up against the (Syrian) troops and the activists used a flag with a Cedar Tree on it as their symbol. The Cedar has become a symbol for the Lebanese people.’
Serhat has had an extremely successful career as a short film maker. A career that has seen his films shown at 45 local and international film festivals as well as win the Australian Screen Directors Association Directing Award. Did he find making a feature film very different to making his shorts? ‘Everyone says they do but I didn’t find it that different. Yeah you have a bigger crew and a longer shoot but ultimately it comes down to planning everything right. We learnt at Film School that if you need to shoot shots A, B and C you work out what order you need to shoot them according to importance in case it rains or something… that’s exactly what I did here as well.’
One of the most amazing things about ‘Cedar Boys’ is the weight of the cast in it. The star of the film Les Chantery has starred alongside Vin Diesel in ‘Pitch Black’ while international stars such as Martin Henderson (‘Torque’, ‘Smokin’ Aces’ and ‘Fly Boys’) and Rachael Taylor (‘Transformers’ and ‘Shutter’) are also major players. How did Serhat go attracting such big name stars to the film, did he play a major hand in the casting? ‘I played a huge hand,’ he explains. ‘Some of the parts I wrote with actors in mind. Waddah Sari plays Sam in the film and I certainly wrote the character of Sam with him in the mind…. Actually every line I wrote for Sam I wrote with him in mind. I worked with Waddah on my short film ‘Bound’, and I very much had him in mind. Martin Henderson came on board because I had a chance to speak to him while he was in Australia for Heath Ledger’s funeral. I spoke to him and he agreed to do it. Rachael I also had a contact with and she had a personal connection to the film and the Lebanese community because her best friend is Lebanese.’
So what gave the film it’s very natural feel, the writing, the directing or the acting? ‘I think it was a case of all three,’ explains Serhat. ‘The script is natural because I grew up in that world, I hung out where the characters hung out, so I guess because of my upbringing it was natural. The directing worked because I made it gritty and it comes across almost docco style with the handheld camera at all, but a lot also come down to the acting. I don’t like my actors to really push…. I just get them to act. With the acting and the script the key to all is good conversation.’
I finish the interview by asking Serhat what he wanted to say to people before they buy their ticket for ‘Cedar Boys’. ‘The main message is that crime doesn’t pay, but the film is also an insight into a marginised part of our community, it is an entertaining but strong message. But I want people to look with these boys… not at them.’