VISION IN MOTION

From TV devotee to rising filmmaker, discover how Yardanos Embaye cracked into Melbourne’s screen industry.

Yardanos Embaye behind the scenes on the set of Swift Street

Yardanos Embaye developed a passion for film and television growing up in Melbourne’s western suburbs as the youngest of five siblings. At home, her family spoke Tigrinya having migrated to Australia from Eritrea and Ethiopia, via the Sudan not long before Yardanos was born. 

“It was really hard for [my family] to assimilate, but something that was really easy for them to do was just turn on the TV,” Yardanos explains. At school in Melbourne’s bourgeoning west – surrounded by kids from many different nationalities – English was the lingua franca and Yardanos relied on her ritualised TV viewing to expand her vocabulary. “I could sit in front of TV and watch constantly. I always had that deep love for it, but I never considered I could forge a career in this industry.” 

At high school, Yardanos developed an interest in photography, which – through the introduction of music videos – morphed into an interest in videography. “My passion evolved from one medium to the next, until I landed on film and TV.” 

Films like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Matrix, and anything Sir Christopher Nolan touched pushed Yardanos’ interest to another level. “My love for it deepened again when I watched movies from all over the world and I discovered different stories from different walks of life. It broadened my worldview.”

There was one Melbourne show, however, that stood out above the rest. The SBS drama Sunshine–about a group of South Sudanese-Australian basketballers who get caught up in an unrelated crime–had the whole Embaye family fixated on the TV. “My family, friends and I were all so excited about that show. When I watched it, I knew where they shot it, the exact roads, and parks; I grew up on those streets. I hadn’t seen anything that was uniquely Melbourne, or my Melbourne like it until then.” 

Around age 15, Yardanos felt sure she wanted to pursue a career in screen, but she didn’t have the slightest clue where to begin. “There isn’t a set standard for how to enter this industry,” she continues, “I graduated High School in 2020 – the first graduating class in Covid – so I was hesitant to jump into a fickle industry – stability wise I thought maybe this isn’t a wise choice.”

After two years of toiling away in hospitality, Yardanos decided to take the plunge and attend a conference run by Media Mentors and AFTRS. “I signed up for this two-day event which had all these industry professionals coming from all different departments including writers, directors, producers, and screen innovators in general.”

“I connected with [Media Mentors co-founder] Esther [Coleman-Hawkins] and she took me under her wing and explained I needed to email everyone….so from 9am to 6pm I emailed producers, production managers and heads of departments.”

Yardanos Embaye and Matthew Waters (2nd block 3rd AD) on the set of Swift Street

With Esther’s advice, Yardanos continued volunteering as a camera operator for RMITV – a student led television production house – and created an excel spreadsheet where she could track the emails she was sending out to industry professionals.  

Eventually, some of these producers replied and pointed Yardanos towards VicScreen’s Professional Attachments register, where she could be considered for a paid attachment to work on a production alongside an experienced practitioner. 

“I applied in February 2023, and I thought ‘forget about it, let it go, they have the details, whatever happens, happens.’”

Six weeks later, Yardanos received an email during a shift at her hospitality job, which set the next chapter of her career in motion. “I opened it. It said I got in. I screamed in my car. I composed myself enough to drive home and called my sister; she was screaming and was so excited too. And from there it was just another waiting game to be matched to a production.”

Another couple of months passed before Yardanos received a call from producer Ivy Mak (Sydney Sleuthers) to discuss a new project, Swift Street, written and created by rising talent Tig Terera (Tinashé, Chenge) and co-produced by Lois Randall (Black Snow, Seriously Red). Swift Street is the story of 21-year-old street smart Elsie who teams up with her hopeless hustler father, Robert, to get him out of debt and save him from a merciless mob boss.

A few weeks later, Yardanos had said goodbye to hospitality and was on the set of Swift Street as an Assistant Director’s (AD) attachment, shadowing the third AD. Yardanos’ attachment was meant to last five weeks, but producers Ivy and Lois extended her contract so she could wrap the production with the whole crew and immerse herself in as many departments as possible.

The whole experience felt like a deeply inspiring crash course, she says. “I jumped between every department, learning etiquette, how long everything takes. I asked a million questions and I'm so grateful to that crew for putting up with me, because they were so gracious.”

Yardanos Embaye filming Swift Street

Off the back of Swift Street, having developed some key contacts in each department of production, Yardanos was approached to join the crew of Liam Neeson’s latest action-thriller The Ice Road 2: Road to the Sky as a production assistant, which shot at Docklands Studios Melbourne and in the regional Victorian town of Walhalla at the start of 2024.

When telling her parents she’d been employed on a Netflix production starring Liam Neeson, their jaws dropped, Yardanos remembers, laughing. “They said, ‘Oh my gosh, so you’re really doing something here.’ They were seeing my dreams come to fruition and were really excited for me.”

Off the back of The Ice Road 2: Road to the Sky Yardanos was hired as the third AD on Pasa Faho – the first VicScreen-supported Originate feature film from writer/director Kalu Oji and producers Mimo Mukii and Ivy Mutuku. Pasa Faho follows Azubuike, a struggling shoe shop owner, who attempts to reconnect with his 10-year-old son, Obinna.

“The way I got Pasa Faho was through Swift Street, again,” Yardanos says. “And everything I loved about Swift Street I found on Pasa Faho – Melbourne stories, Melbourne streets, Melbourne architecture, Melbourne people, just Melbourne…you’d recognise those streets anywhere.” 

“But there were also pivotal moments where [Tig Terera and Kalu Oji] inspired me to say, ‘I’m going to do what they did’…They’ve inspired me to write stories about how I grew up and how my friends grew up. It’s very uniquely west Melbourne. This is how we lived, and this is why we are who we are.” 

There's a huge appetite from audiences around Australia, and the world more broadly, to see these kinds of stories, Yardanos believes. The people who grew up in these communities also yearn to see their lives reflected on the screen. “We just need to bridge the gap on how to turn these stories into productions, to get funding and reach these audiences.” 

At 21 years old, Yardanos has a vision not just for her own career, but for Victoria’s screen industry as a whole. Ultimately, she wants to write and direct her own stories, but she knows there’s work to do yet. “If I could dream, my end goal would be writing and directing. But I don’t want to jump straight to directing before doing the grunt work. I'm not becoming a director with no idea how lighting works for example. So, I want to learn all the jargon and how to hone my craft first.”

For now, Yardanos is ready to roll up her sleeves and dive into whatever work happens to be shooting next in her own backyard, and beyond. 

Interested in pursuing a career in screen like Yardanos? Sign up for VicScreen’s Professional Attachments register here.