Oz doc to profile tennis champ

Screen Australia is funding a feature-length documentary that profiles a young refugee who became an elite tennis player despite having a volatile father.

Jelena Dokic

CJZ Productions will make Jelena; Unbreakable, the story of Croatian-born Jelena Dokic, who won numerous championships and was ranked as the fourth-best female tennis player in the world in 2002.

The doc is one of 18 factual projects that received A$3.5m (US$2.5m) from Screen Australia’s documentary producer and documentary commissioned programmes.

Among the commissioned shows is Silent No More (working title), a two-parter for pubcaster the ABC from Southern Pictures, which will follow campaigner Tracey Spicer as she investigates Australia’s hidden epidemic of workplace sexual harassment.

Another is Identity Films’ The Artful Dissident (w/t), a one-hour observational doc for the ABC, written, directed and coproduced by Danny Ben-Moshe (My Mother’s Lost Children).

The slate includes the previously announced Body Hack 3.0 from Essential Media (Network 10); and ABC commissions such as Northern Pictures’ Employable Me season two and Love on the Spectrum, Mint Pictures’ The Pool and Joined Up Films’ Will Australia Ever Have a Black Prime Minister?.

The producer slate includes Colour Films’ Greeta, the story of an Indian acid-attack survivor who embarks on a campaign for change in her community.

Sarah Shaw will produce Milkman, which profiles Luke Davies, the poet, author and Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Lion. Rush Films’ feature-length doc Under the Volcano examines AIR Studios Montserrat, a recording facility on a remote island in the Caribbean that was built by Beatles producer George Martin.

Cameron Ford and Charlie Turnbull will write, direct and produce The Bikes of Wrath, a six-part series and feature film that follows five Australian friends as they attempt to cycle from Oklahoma to California in honour of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s.

Finally, Yarra Bank Films’ My Big Fat Italian Kitchen will follow Antonio de Benedetto, an Italian chef on a quest to change the world with food as his apprentices are aspiring chefs with Down syndrome.