We’re heading to @canneseries for our World Premiere! 💕✨
A deeply personal story exploring the complexities of family and culture starring @cruzylena and @triona.calimbayan.giles – soon reaching a global audience.
We’re incredibly proud of what this team has created, and honoured to be the only Australian series selected for the festival, taking place April 23-28.
INA is a Sweet Mess Production for YouTube. Principal production funding from @screenaustralia in association with @screenqueensland .
Created + Written + Directed by: @rachelmaxinex
Producers: @daniellejoy@raechoi_
Executive Producers: @mssouzani@rubyruizzz
Co-Producer: @eleannnoor
Starring:
Gloria: @cruzylena
Madeline: @triona.calimbayan.giles
#ScreenAustralia #ScreenQueensland #MadeInQueensland #CANNESERIES
Some big scary, big exciting news about some very big pants I’ve recently put on - I’ve started my own company @liminapictures !
This decision came after years of straddling work worlds and juggling odd jobs, and finally last year my first full year of creative work since leaving law - through Screen Australia’s Enterprise program and a placement as Development Producer at @goodapplespictures . It was nothing like I expected and somehow so much more. I gained perspective, momentum, confidence and I’m incredibly grateful to the kind, smart, generous friends and mentors who offered encouragement, insight, and solace along the way.
I’ve been nervous about taking this leap. Something about not knowing enough, not being enough, not being ready. But then, there’s also something about being in your 30s and realising that sitting in self-doubt isn’t cute anymore and it’s frankly exhausting. Something about letting go of perfection in favour of being brave and true. Something about big pants being daunting because they’re big but also just pants and I love pants. Something about embracing the unknown - and the will to go there anyway - as intrinsic to the thrill of being alive.
Limina is connected to liminality - that in betweenness in feeling, identity, and knowledge - which I deeply relate to. But I wanted something that wasn’t just a state of being that can sometimes feel akin to being stuck or stagnant. I wanted a place that is full of possibility.
To me, storytelling at its best is transportive. It takes you somewhere unexpected, unforgettable. I think about the time I saw DRIVE MY CAR and came out of the cinema feeling inexplicably changed. I had plans to meet a friend for a beer, and it took a strangely intense amount of social self-discipline to get there - all I wanted to do was keep driving so I could stay with that feeling a little longer.
That’s the kind of space I want to create with Limina. A threshold. A crossing. An invitation to step through.
More about what Limina means to me, my pre-Limina work, and the work to come:
A little wrap up from our time at @canneseries ✨🎬
Two weeks ago we premiered in Cannes - from pink carpets and photocalls to screenings, panels, new friends and very surreal moments in between, it was an experience we’ll carry with us for a long time.
It was incredible sharing the series with an audience for the first time, and we’re so grateful to everyone who supported us along the way!
Now we’re looking ahead - and so excited to start releasing episodes from June 12, coinciding with Philippine Independence Day 🇵🇭🫶🏼
𝑰𝒏𝒂 is a Sweet Mess Production for @youtube . Principal production funding from @screenaustralia , in association with @screenqueensland . Marketing assistance provided by @screenaustralia .
SOME KIND OF BLUE is having its Victorian premiere at @stkildafilmfest next month!
Thrilled to be bringing this baby to where @raechoi_ and @chunyinrainbowchan first met in the iconic @cibi_minanoie and where some of our cast and crew are based so they can see and hear it for the first time on the big screen.
Screening Friday June 5th at 6:30pm in the Drama Showcase. Session is open-captioned, followed by filmmaker Q&A.
Tickets available now - hope to see you there! x
Pink carpet moments ✨💕
From our world premiere to closing night, it was so surreal stepping onto the pink carpet at the legendary Palais des Festivals et des Congrès.
A blur of cameras, nerves and trying to stay present through it all and in the moment together.
We’re so grateful to have shared it with a few special ones in our team! 💖
World premiere day! 🫶🏽🇫🇷
From the photocall on the beach at the iconic Hôtel Barrière Le Majestic Cannes to our official screening at Auditorium Jean Mineur, this was a day we’ll never forget.
We premiered to a full house - to share our series with such a generous, attentive audience and feel their reactions in realtime was incredibly special. A huge thank you to programmer @tm_pop for championing us all the way from Australia to be part of the festival.
We were proud and honoured to be the first series in the festival’s history to centre the Filipino diaspora.
Still taking it all in. Thank you @canneseries for this unforgettable premiere ✨
A six-part comedy-drama about family, food, and second chances. Created by @rachelmaxinex .
Watch on @youtube from June 12, following our @canneseries world premiere.
❤️🔥 Subscribe now - link in bio.
INA is a Sweet Mess Production for YouTube. Principal production funding from @screenaustralia in association with @screenqueensland .
Producers are usually well and truly behind the scenes – so BTS photos are few and far between… 🫠
Instead, here are some moments with producer @raechoi_ from prep and the shoot: Rae with Bobby the bear (borrowed from her family home for set dressing), with @rachelmaxinex at local Filipino café @dovetailsocial , and a bit of well-timed fortune cookie wisdom along the way.
Stay tuned as we introduce more of our wonderful team behind the series!
Photo 1 @rachelmaxinex
Photo 2 & 3 @raechoi_
#behindthescenes
✨ Introducing Producer Rae Choi ✨
“Rach and I are wonderfully simpatico in how we both turn to storytelling to process complicated feelings around belonging – within family, within culture, within our very bodies. INA represents a closely held dream for third culture kids like us. It reaches for reimagined moments we’ve long hoped for, and offers a sharply funny and deeply moving love letter to the gap between how we seek love from those we want it from most – our parents – and how we learn to find it for ourselves.”
Rae is a Chinese-Australian filmmaker and founder of Limina Pictures. With family roots in Hong Kong and Malaysia, she is drawn to nuanced, culturally specific stories. Her work has been supported by SBS, ABC, Screen Australia and Screen Queensland, and she was named one of Screen Producers Australia’s 2024 Ones to Watch, receiving the Placement Grant to work with Heretic (Greece) and Paloma Productions (Denmark).
Rae produced the 16mm feature film PARIS FUNERAL, 1972, co-wrote and produced the ABC-commissioned short VIV’S SILLY MANGO, and directed the docuseries IT GOES LIKE THIS. As a writer-director, her short WHEN THE SKY WAS BLUE was nominated for an Australian Writers’ Guild Award, and her latest short SOME KIND OF BLUE premiered at Adelaide Film Festival and continues to screen nationally and internationally.
SOME KIND OF BLUE is having its international premiere this week in Turin, Italy at @seeyousoundfestival - a festival dedicated to exploring the unmistakable connection between music and film.
We’re playing in the 7 INCH program ‘DISSONANCE: Four Songs on Disability’.
Some words from the festival program:
The commonly negative connotation associated with the term dissonance betrays the many positive implications and resonances that the sonic context instead brings to the fore. While conflict and the disruption of harmony may initially stand out, the perspective shifts toward what generates tension, produces movement and variety, and ultimately stimulates curiosity and interest.
The short films framing this selection invite the viewer to reawaken curiosity, rediscovering the value and intensity of presence as an antidote to social invisibility. Spectatorship itself can become a superpower—one that illuminates the margins of the spotlight, revealing their inhabitants and their stories, where disability requires a relinquishing of the economy of automatisms in order to inhabit the world fully and feel part of it.
The non‑conformity that embraces dissonance traces uncharted paths toward the sea and beyond words, with bodies in play, hearts beneath the stage, and the basslines of the speakers acting as a metronome.
Screening with:
BEYOND WORDS – Kim Brand (19′ – 2024)
HARDCORE – Adán Aliaga (22′ – 2022)
IN MY SKIN – Sandor M. Salas (14′ – 2022)
Image 1: Film still of Indiana (@chunyinrainbowchan ) lying in bed, hazily hearing.
Image 2: Film still of Indiana in a dark bedroom, holding a lit candle.
Image 3: Film still of Indiana through a crowd in a red dress (@bulleybulleylabel ) playing the keyboard.
Queensland Director Spotlight: Rae Choi, Brisbane 📍
Rae Choi is a Chinese-Australian filmmaker with family roots in Hong Kong and Borneo, Malaysia. Proudly straddling multiple identities and creative roles, she moves between narrative film, documentary, and video art, building a body of work that spans Australia, Japan, Italy and France, with projects screening at international festivals and broadcasting in Australia and the UK.
Her latest short film, SOME KIND OF BLUE, recently premiered at Adelaide Film Festival – a deeply personal work inspired by her discovery in adulthood that she is hard-of-hearing. She also directed the short documentary series IT GOES LIKE THIS, supported by Screen Queensland, and co-directed the three-channel video work THREE DAYS AFTER with musician and artist Rainbow Chan. Her directorial debut, WHEN THE SKY WAS BLUE, was nominated for an Australian Writers’ Guild Award and acquired by SBS On Demand.
Rae has collaborated with companies such as Arenamedia, Matchbox Pictures, Momo Film Co. and Good Apples Pictures, and has been selected for Screen Australia’s Enterprise Program, For Film’s Sake’s Platform Lab and AFTRS Talent Camp, and was named one of SPA’s Ones to Watch.
She is the co-creator of the dark comedy series IN HER BODY, shortlisted for SBS Digital Originals, and is currently developing her debut feature DAYS UNDER THE SUN, set between Australia and Malaysia.
🎬 What’s next for this Queensland director? Next year, Rae will be heading abroad to work with Heretic in Athens and Paloma Productions in Copenhagen, as well as working on Robert Connolly’s next feature film, SHIVER.
Are you a Queensland director? Be sure to check your ADG membership is up to date, then send us a DM about a spotlight! 📲
