Filmmaker Statement

We hand-reared a lamb who was born ‘not quite right’ – a second twin whose Mum rejected him - a bit of a lemon, and that’s what we called him. Eastern Australia had been inundated with floods two years in a row, bringing hardship and loss. Tony Dean and I were producing training films for a government client and wanted to make something more creative. Russ - an English actor and Tony’s brother - was in town and we were intrigued by the work of Sarajevo-born Milijana Cancar, who came to Australia as a refugee during the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1994. Mili, Russ and I created the characters Raff and Beatrice, and co-developed the script, with the little farm on Dja Dja Wurrung country in central Victoria I share with my family as our location. We filmed in two and a half days with two actors, a lamb and a less-than-skeleton crew of three, then spent a year cutting, shaping and finding the Lemony gold.