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Chinese-Australian film director Tony Ayres thrills to the chase

Macau-born filmmaker focused on racial and personal identity in his earlier work, but he's branching out with a thriller

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Tony Ayres (right) on the set of his thriller Cut Snake with star Alex Russell.

When Tony Ayres directed his semi-autobiographical breakthrough feature The Home Song Stories in 2007, it was entirely possible that he was consigning himself to a box labelled "Chinese-Australian filmmaker".

In fact, he concedes, "I was in that box for quite a while", with earlier films such as China Dolls (1998) and Sadness (1999) also drawing on his ethnic heritage.

The writer-director was born in Macau and moved to Australia with his mother at age three. The Home Song Stories - which won multiple prizes in Australia, and also the Golden Horse Awards (in Taiwan) for best original screenplay (for Ayres) and best actress (for Joan Chen Chong) - came out of his coming to terms with his past and addressed his troubled relationship with his mother.

Portrayed in the film by Chen, she had moved Ayres and his little sister to Melbourne soon after arriving Down Under with his Australian seaman father. "And I was trying to deal with the profound effect of her death and trying to understand her," he says.

In recent years Ayres has undertaken a wide variety of work for TV that has ranged from creating and executive producing children's series Nowhere Boys to being one of the directors of The Slap, the equally successful series adaptation of the bestselling Australian novel about the repercussions when a child is slapped at a party.

A scene from the film featuring Russell with Sullivan Stapleton (left).
A scene from the film featuring Russell with Sullivan Stapleton (left).
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