A movie for international, mixed and third culture kids, Carmen & Bolude is a multicultural comedy based on the real-life friendship of Michela Carattini and Bolude Watson.
Written by the duo and co-directed by Carattini, Carmen & Bolude tells of two friends who must travel from New York City to Sydney, Australia, where they have ten days to collect 100 ‘welcomes’ so that Bolude’s traditional Nigerian father will agree to let her marry an Australian.
As the film begins its tour screenings across Australia, Peter Gray spoke with Carattini about how it was to bring her real-life friendship to life on screen and the importance of making a film that entertains and educates without sounding too preachy.
I know this film is based on the true friendship between yourself and Bolude, but when it comes to something like this, how much is factual, we’ll say, and how much is embellished for dramatic flair?
When we’re asked to give an approximate numbers, we say that 75% of the film is true to life. Our friendship is true. Our identity stories are true. The romantic stories are pretty true to life. There are so many little details that come from the experiences that we’ve both had, like our interactions with the Sydney communities, including the way that First Nations Australia made me feel embraced, without exception. And the phone call between Bolude and her father is almost word for word how it happened. The dinner scene and all those comments all happened.
However, we took a lot of different comments over the span of a long period of time, and put them all together in one dinner. Maybe the easiest thing to say is that our (characters’) mothers hadn’t passed away and them not being a part of our lives is not true. Our mothers in real life are very much alive. They’re very much our champions and very much our best friends. This film couldn’t have been made without them. We took them out of the film because we needed to simplify an already complex story, and the film was really about our relationships with our fathers and our cultural heritage from our fathers. We took them out of the film, but in our lives they are very huge support and great examples in our lives.
It’s nice that they’re still support, because that could’ve been an awkward conversation; “I love you, but you’re not in this film. Sorry.”
(Laughs) And I’ve had that conversation with my mom. I told her how I was writing the film to figure out my relationship with my father, who had passed away. My mom was so much more accessible to me, and so easy to understand for me. My father died too young, but I did have that conversation with my mom, and she completely understood why. She’s not somebody who likes to have a lot of attention anyway.
It’s an incredible parallel for me watching this. I’m the same, with my father passing away when I was very young, and my mum was the only parent I had. I’m a mummy’s boy, no shame.
First of all, I love your mom. That’s amazing. I’m a parent now and, you know, they sacrifice so much for us. There is nothing wrong with appreciating your parents.
I think that’s one of the major realisations when you’re older, in realising how much you took them for granted as kids. My mum recently gave me a book that had the history of my dad and everything about his life, and I couldn’t even imagine how hard it would’ve been for her to put that into words. But this film is one of those fascinating experiences, where on the surface it appears to be this lighthearted story about these two girls, but you look further and see the emotional depth of what it’s actually saying.
Thank you so much for recognising that. First of all, I just have to say what an amazing gift your mom gave you with that book. I love her already. But thank you for looking beyond the surface. I think it’s right, it’s easy to take a very superficial look at this film and say, “Oh, it’s another rom com, or a chick flick, or there isn’t a serious discussion underneath. The fact that we brought (this movie) to audiences with humour, because we have to live our lives with joy as well, and we wanted to put across the truth of that. But the risk in doing that is that people don’t look beyond the surface, so I’m really grateful to you for talking about those deeper layers, because they were the point, right?
And that’s our hope for the film, too, that it’s more accessible, especially in this moment in time in the world, in the political landscape. I just need to laugh. I just need to feel joy. I just can’t hear about another terrible thing happening in the world that I have no influence and control over, or that I feel that I don’t. What loses most campaigns for social change is a lack of humour. And that was a message that we really felt in our bones. We didn’t want to hit anyone over the head with a lecture or another argument about diversity, equity and inclusion.
And from our communities, we didn’t want to see another member, for example a dark skinned African woman, play another slave, or play a single mom on drugs. There are so many women in our life that we can hold up as incredible examples of humanity that we want to emulate. We want to show that the everyday superhero is not the Marvel kind, but the kind we want to see as an example in this world.
It’s the same thing I see as a gay man being portrayed on screen, and that queer lives are so often presented with a sense of tragedy. I understand that mentality of wanting to have those conversations on screen.
Yeah, what you’re talking about are those harmful tropes in our storytelling. In our media, that kind of repeat of the same stereotype about our identities in our community reduce us down to a single dimension of something that is usually negative. We were very conscious with what we were doing in telling this story about dark skinned women. We were very conscious with stories that are normally told about Latin women and indigenous women. Very, very conscious. And my character, Carmen, is part of the rainbow community and we gave small nods to the fact that she was interested in women, without making it the point of the movie.
When it comes to the collaboration between yourself and Bolude, how is that process? Obviously, the two of you are friends and you’re aware of each other’s quirks and personalities, but with writing, do you each have your own narratives you wish to explore and you bring them together? Or is it quite a streamlined process?
Yeah, it happened quite naturally over many years. We wrote this film over 10 years. We were both actors in the Australian industry, and we met at a casting director workshop, and we really connected as sisters and admirers of each other’s work. I thought I would never see her again after that workshop. But she called me, and I found out many years later she got my number from the casting director (laughs), about writing together. I told her that I wasn’t a writer and I asked why she would want to work with me, but she just had a strong feeling.
Right away we started talking about how we didn’t see the kind of women that we could relate to as multicultural women in the kind of characters we had to play. There were very few roles for dark skinned African women at all in Australia, particularly 10 years ago when we started writing. So for this, we wanted to write about characters we would’ve wanted to see when we were younger. Bolude started working on something that was more along the lines of the soapies that were so well known on Australian television, and I told her that that wasn’t really what I wanted to do.
(Bolude) was going through this moment with her father and her marriage, where her father had disowned her. She would tell me what he said, and she would do his voice in the Yoruba accent. She would do a whole bit. It was such a painful moment in her life because she was so close to her father, and he was disowning her and making her choose between her fiancée and him. But at the same time, there was something hilarious about the things he was saying. Things like there being no gay men in Nigeria. I was crying from laughing, we both were, and I knew that this was what we had to write about. This was truth. This was reality.
We wanted to tell a story about being an international identity, being mixed race, and seeing different cultural identities from all perspectives. Bolude’s character was in a mixed relationship. My character was a mixed identity. And another thing I will mention that’s not true to life that I think is important to mention, is that the tradition of getting 100 welcomes is not a Nigerian Yoruba tradition. We just took that concept and showed off Sydney’s incredible multicultural communities.
It does feel incredibly topical, and that you were writing it 10 years ago speaks to just how important it’s always been. You found that balance between entertainment and educating without beating people over the heads. And on another note, I did find myself immediately clicking with your character as soon as her holy spirit was “Christina, Shakira, Selena and J.Lo.” I was immediately sold.
I love that. You made my day. We have so many little easter eggs like that that only certain people are going to get. There’s references to Yoruba food that I’m sure only Yoruba people are going to get. And, yeah, when Carmen crosses herself, not everybody’s going to pick that up, but someone will see it and treasure it. They’ll feel that detail. We tried really hard, because comedy is hard to cross cultures, and we knew making a film for multiple cultures, so we tried really hard to put in different styles of comedy. We had that quick New York banter. We had some physical slapstick. We had that quirky Aussie humour. We had that sarcastic, punchy Yoruba humour. I’m really proud that we got some Darug language in there too. We tried to make it an internationally accessible film. And the fact that you’ve picked up on one of those little details makes me so happy.
Carmen & Bolude is currently screening on select dates across Australia, with more to be announced. Head to the official Carmen & Bolude website to stay up to date on touring dates.
Carmen & Bolude’s screening dates and locations are as follows:
23 March, 2025, 6:30PM – Dendy Cinema Newtown, Sydney w/ Q&A Tickets
25 March, 2025, 6:40PM – Cinema Nova, Melbourne – VICTORIAN PREMIERE w/ Q&A Tickets
27 March, 2025, 6:30PM – Gala Cinema, Wollongong w/ Q&A (presented by Screen Illawarra) Tickets
29 March, 2025, MATINEE – Casula Powerhouse & Arts Centre, Sydney
29 March, 2025, 8PM – Casula Powerhouse & Arts Centre, Sydney w/ Q&A Tickets
30 March, 2025, 2PM – Backlot, Perth – WEST AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE Tickets
