22-07-2025
Moni director Alana Hicks wants to reimagine the Australian film industry
Papua New Guinean-Australian writer, director, and self-described "mad schemer" Alana Hicks is making waves in bringing Pacific stories to life on Australian screens — but she wants to change how it's done, too.
Her latest work is Moni, a six-part SBS series filmed in Western Sydney among Australia's large Samoan and Pacific diaspora that explores the complexities of family, faith, and sexuality.
Created and written by Taofia Pelesasa, Hicks said Moni was "as much about intergenerational trauma as it is about a mother and son relationship".
"[It's] a representation of how patterns exist in all cultures, but particularly in Pacific Island cultures," she told Nesia Daily.
"We have such a strong sense of family, tradition, respect, especially for elders. But we also have to acknowledge when that can go wrong and when people are silenced, when victims can be silenced.
"We have to be able to allow them a platform to speak. And this starts a conversation."
Moni, starring Chris Alosio as Moni, brought together Pasifika creatives from all over Australia. ( SBS )
Telling those stories meant rethinking not just what was on screen, but how things were done behind the scenes and on the set, embracing a different way of working — one rooted in Pacific values and community.
Hicks said it was a different way of doing things that "doesn't quite fit with the model of traditional western filmmaking or TV making".
"We need to reimagine how we do things in screen, film and TV and all digital, because there've been so regimented and hierarchical for so long in the Western tradition of filmmaking that it's very hard for us with a community collaborative approach," she said.
"This can't just be one person's vision, like the director or the showrunner or the executive producer. This is a community project. This is a community story. So we all have to work together.
"There is no one better than anyone else on set in a Pacific set because every single person is playing a part. You can't boss an aunty around just because she's an extra.
"You don't say, 'Sit there. Don't eat first.' That's not how it works."
'It's a numbers game'
With roots in Porebada village near Port Moresby, Hicks didn't just walk into her career.
"I'm a mad schemer, I just scheme," she told Nesia Daily about her beginnings.
"In that year 2018–2019, I set myself a challenge: every month, you go out and you try to apply for three opportunities.
"So you're kind of balancing the hope and the rejection, disappointment, and you just keep cycling through that until something hits, because it's a numbers game.
Alana Hicks is in her element on set. ( Supplied )
At the time, Hicks admitted it was hard.
"I'd just had a couple of kids ... I was working a lot. I think we were living with my parents as well," she said.
"But I kept applying, and something hit.
"What also happens in the process of this is that you're developing your applications. You are honing your writing skills. You're actually trying to figure out what it is you're trying to say.
"You're cultivating better applications, and you're going for the opportunities that actually are going to be right for you as well. I did that for 12 months."
On the set of Chicken, a short film about a woman who is overcharged for a chicken at her local store. ( Supplied )
That process eventually opened doors and funding for Alana's first short film, Chicken, starring PNG actor Wendy Mocke.
From there, she continued to grow.
"For all the Pacific writers, directors, content makers out there, make it your own," she said.
"The way we need to make it, [guided by our] fundamental values. That's the only way that we're going to make it, the way we know how."
