Co-directed by Jared Nicholson and Ben Lawrence, Aftermath is a narrative steeped in paranoia, fear, trauma, conspiracy theories and some questionable mistruths.

On the surface, however, it’s a delicate, sensitive and well-considered psychological examination of Wendy Scurr and the extreme mental anguish she experienced in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre. Scurr witnessed unimaginable horror that day, helping triage victims and survivors as one of the first people on the scene.

As a companion piece to Wendy’s story, Aftermath is also a fearless psychological portrait of Jared’s own trauma and his early-life obsession with conspiracy theories, his relationship with his father, and how his life becomes intertwined with Wendy’s.

As Nicholson documents Wendy’s quest for answers, he too becomes entangled in a web of misinformation. Part confession, part elegy, Aftermath bears witness to the harrowing effects of trauma and illuminates the dark world of alternative facts, where even the most unlikely people can become ensnared, and where truth is no longer a refuge but a battleground.

In an era when conspiracy theories thrive online, I think it’s important to make my own position clear as the interviewer here. Although my personal beliefs are probably irrelevant, it’s a question I’ve been asked repeatedly over the past few weeks while discussing the film.

My position, based on the historical account of the Port Arthur massacre, is that Martin Bryant was responsible for the murders of 35 innocent people and the devastating impact on countless others. I believe Bryant was a soulless, dim-witted monster whose actions were influenced by the Dunblane massacre and its perpetrator, Thomas Hamilton. I also believe that the circumstances surrounding his access to weapons, including those associated with eccentric heiress Helen Harvey, and irresponsible gun shop owner Terry Hill, deserve to be understood in their proper historical context.

While some details surrounding the tragedy may have become muddled over time, I have yet to encounter a conspiracy theory about the events leading up to or during the massacre that I find credible.

All that said, Wendy’s accounts, beliefs and opinions about what happened that day should be considered by audiences with a deep understanding of the unimaginable psychological trauma she endured.

In time, Aftermath may very well be the best Australian film of the year. And deservedly so. But before experiencing it for yourself, I warn you… buckle up.

Aftermath will screen at the Adelaide Film Festival. Details here.

“I don’t doubt that this is a pretty confronting film and journey, but I ask audiences to sit with it because it ultimately lands in a very humanistic place, which is where we wanted it to land.”

Interview by Matthew Eeles

How did you two come to work together on Aftermath?

Jared Nicholson After Wendy’s passing, I experienced a bit of a dark period where I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with this film that Wendy and I had undertaken together. I was talking with producer Rebecca Barry, who came on board in 2020, two years after Wendy’s passing, and she was quizzing me on why I came to believe what Wendy did. I started talking to Rebecca about my childhood and the way I actually saw the world. Not necessarily that this was a conspiracy theory, but how Wendy and I both saw the mechanics of the world.

Rebecca and I both agreed that there was an opportunity to put myself into this story to give audiences a different perspective on how people can come to a place like this. With that process, I became really overwhelmed. I know everything about Wendy’s story and all the characters involved. I know my own story, but I had no idea how the hell it fed into Wendy’s story with any real purpose. It was very cloudy for me. I knew there was an opportunity there, but I just needed someone who could come in and co-direct with me to realise the film’s potential. That’s where Ben came in.

Ben, what’s your side of that?

Ben Lawrence Jared and Rebecca approached me around three years ago about this story. Jared had already devoted a lot of time, emotional effort and creative energy to the project, and had built relationships with the characters within the film. To be honest, I was scared of it to begin with. It’s a very ambitious film. There’s a lot of silence and taboo around at least the catalyst for the film, the Port Arthur massacre. How we would navigate that was something that appealed to me, but I knew creatively it was going to be a real journey.

I also knew that, emotionally, it had already been a journey for Jared, and it was going to be one for all of us as we worked out how best to nurture this film through to the end. What appealed to me was this idea of Jared and Wendy’s entanglement and what that meant for both of them. Then, particularly with her passing, how that affected Jared, and how we could give the audience some sort of framework or safety net to go on that journey as well.

The story really sits with you. There’s a lot of uncertainty within it that’s going to be tough on an audience, but I wanted to somehow give it a solid framework so audiences could go on a journey and feel that we were guiding them through pretty precarious territory. All those challenges appealed to me.

As soon as Jared and I started talking, I knew he could tell me what he needed and the story he wanted to tell. I love the ambition of this film, so that’s what brought me on board.

Jared, when did Wendy first come to your attention?

Jared I came across this story in 2015. I was getting my daily news from the likes of Alex Jones’ InfoWars, which is really out-there stuff in hindsight. But at the time, it gave me a sense of how to process the chaos of the world.

Every time there happened to be a mass shooting in America, people would talk about gun reform and supposed events being orchestrated or used as a means of talking about the Second Amendment. Over and over again, I kept seeing people share the video of Wendy presenting at the Inverell Forum in 2001 in the comment sections of these articles.

I was only eight years old at the time, and I didn’t know much about the Port Arthur massacre, so I was coming into it pretty blind. I was captivated by the story she told and her perspective. Wendy was there on the day of this tragedy. She was an employee, she helped triage the wounded, and she was a national hero. And here was this woman who had a different story to the official one. To her, a lot of things didn’t add up.

I was intrigued. I discovered her story long after she’d removed herself from the spotlight, and I wanted to know how it had all ended for her. I started tracing the threads of the people she was working with in the early 2000s, while she was touring around Australia, and began reaching out to them.

Along with that came warnings not to explore this story or Wendy’s story, for fear of my own safety. Ultimately, I found someone who was still in close contact with Wendy, and they opened the door to a phone call with her. It all began from there.

One thing led to another, and she opened more doors and revealed more information. Over the course of about three years, I did three filming trips. We spoke on the phone regularly, unpacking this story together until her passing in December 2018.

Ben, what was your interpretation of Wendy and her story?

Ben I only knew her through the footage Jared had filmed and the phone calls he’d recorded with her, but I could see a genuine relationship between two people supporting each other. I saw a genuine friendship, and I saw Jared as a filmmaker wanting to share her story.

Over time, I worked out what that story was, what it meant to her, what it meant to Jared, and the effect it had on the people around her. It was this ripple effect that I saw within her life, and I could see that it was at the core of the story.

Similarly, with Jared’s story, the people in our lives and the support they give us, or don’t give us, can really affect our trajectory. It seemed like there was a version of Wendy before Port Arthur and one distinctly after it.

Similarly, with Jared as a character in the story, there’s the child we see and then there’s the person making the film, followed by the Jared who emerges after the film. I think that’s a really interesting aspect of it. We think we’re all fixed in life, but there are clearly distinct versions of us that exist in the eyes of others. I only saw a small part of that with Wendy, but I think we’ve managed to tell her story and her journey in full.

For me personally, the hardest tragedy footage to watch has always been that of September 11 and Port Arthur. You could shoot footage on the highest-quality video camera or a smartphone, but nothing ever feels as real as grainy video footage does. Although the horror is mostly audible in the footage shown at the beginning of Aftermath, was there ever a discussion about potentially not including it? Or was it always going to be included?

Jared: I don’t think we always set out to use it, but I feel that what was important to explore within the second stage of Wendy’s story was creating a foundation for what she’d been through. We wanted people to understand the role she played on the day, the trauma that came from not feeling supported, and then to understand, through her perspective, why she had to keep going and became, knowingly or unknowingly, this troublemaker.

Ben?

Ben: We definitely had discussions about it. I think what led me to the final decision to show the footage was the realisation that there’s a whole generation of people who don’t know about Port Arthur. Jared’s a bit younger than me, but there’s a whole online audience younger than him who are discovering and understanding what Port Arthur was through the footage, stories and comments that remain online. That’s the history of it.

I think that, by not showing it, some context would be lost. On one hand, it’s easy for people to get the sense that we’re sensationalising this tragedy by showing it. Are we potentially re-triggering people? What is the value of it?

But I think we have to understand that these things get lost to history, along with the true toll they took and what they looked like. If you look at something like Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, there’s an incredible sequence in that film where he plays the sound of that tragedy over a black screen. I thought that was an incredibly powerful choice, but it’s because the footage and visuals of that day are so ingrained in our minds that our imaginations did the rest of the work.

I think we had to provide that context so that people who see this film in 20 years will understand what the film is trying to tell them through its own time capsule. So that’s where we landed with it. But it wasn’t an easy decision. It’s confronting footage, particularly for those who remember it. This was a collective national trauma.

There are so many potential ways for people to interpret this film. From my point of view, I was mostly interested in Wendy’s psychology. But other people could easily interpret Aftermath as a conspiracy theory documentary, an anti-government documentary, and so on. How do you hope the majority of people will interpret this film?

Jared: It could definitely be seen in a number of different ways. I just hope people can watch it and find a way to see how two people from different worlds can land in the same place, caught up in the dangers of conspiracy theories, and how easy it is to get lost. I believe that talking about these things is part of the solution. Not talking about conspiracy theories, or pushing people further to the fringes, doesn’t help those who are already disenfranchised.

I ask because it’s an unfortunate reality that there’s potential for people to interpret this film in negative ways. I think some people could see it as a pro-conspiracy theory documentary. Are you prepared for that feedback?

Jared: You’re right, and I am prepared. From the very beginning, I knew undertaking this film was going to be a scary, dangerous and really difficult ride. We all recognised that throughout development, especially me, because I’ve been on this journey for 11 years.

We’ve been pitching this film since around 2020. A lot of people are interested in the subject matter, but many wouldn’t take the risk because of the possibility that it might not land well with some sections of the audience.

I think someone like Wendy, who survived that day, was a national hero and championed other survivors and employees who fell through the cracks, is a good way to approach a tricky subject of this nature. The story is told from the inside. It’s not told from behind the keyboard of someone sitting at a computer. It’s about following Wendy’s journey through the aftermath and understanding how someone can end up in that place.

Ben, do you have an opinion on this?

Ben: I just want to commend Jared for trying to tell this story from the inside out. I think his dedication to it is admirable. His relationship with Wendy, and his efforts to honour her story in all its tragedy, are what we were trying to capture.

But I think there’s a huge silence around these types of events, and Jared stepped into that silence. The film tries to say that silence around these events isn’t necessarily healthy. Trying to shut down discussion, or even talking about or mentioning these things, makes them feel taboo.

But that was Wendy’s approach. She wanted to raise the issue. She wanted to talk about it, whatever the messy conversation might be. She wanted to have it. I think that’s where the film tries to reflect on these issues and suggest that this amnesia, silence or taboo doesn’t generally allow a society to move forward.

Whether it’s this event or others, the conversation needs to happen. I think what illustrates that beautifully is that this took place in the analogue era. This was pre-internet, so we could see what the town halls looked like. We could see people passing around physical tapes, newsletters, photocopies and all that sort of stuff. That’s how the information spread, but it was people connecting.

Now we’re in a place where these connections only magnify things, and people are less able to come together physically. In some ways, this film offers a way to look at a very singular story, but ultimately it’s about people trying to talk about the messiness of trauma, with all its dangerous subject matter.

Ultimately, we need to heal through connection, and that’s what Wendy really espoused.

Wendy mentions quite a few mistruths in Aftermath, such as the urban legend that the café opened one week later, which it didn’t; the claim that police didn’t arrive until 7pm, which isn’t a fact; and the lack of any mention of why Bryant pleaded guilty and why there was no public trial, as though there was something unusual about that, when in reality there were very good reasons. But the film contains no disclaimer when these things are mentioned. Why is that? I’m worried that so many people will walk away from this film believing these mistruths.

Ben: Look, you’re making a really, really good point. This is something we debated a lot. But we intentionally went in saying we weren’t going to have academics or experts, and we weren’t going to dissect every fact, because that’s not what the film is about.

The film is actually about putting you in that mindset where you go, “Oh, okay, that sounds reasonable to me.” We’re putting the audience in Wendy’s mindset, and ultimately Jared gets pulled into it, too. I don’t think we could demonstrate how that happens without the audience feeling a little uneasy about it.

The issues Wendy was obsessed with, which you rightly point out involved some incorrect facts, were her reality. That was why she called for discussion and open discourse, which was ultimately shut down.

I think a lot of people in Wendy’s situation could have found much more peace, and potentially lived a much more fulfilling life, if those issues, particularly the ones you’ve raised, had simply been disclosed to her in some way by the authorities. Instead, they were allowed to fester, and people took advantage of her. Once that happens and she doesn’t have support, there’s a level of betrayal that sends her into quite a spiral.

It was a really difficult decision to make within the film to start talking about some of those conspiracy theories. I felt, and I think Jared and I came to the same conclusion, that as soon as you create a vacuum by not addressing them, you give them power.

I think that, when you start pointing out some of the more preposterous claims, the others start to crumble. So audiences are left sitting with uncertainty, just as people like Wendy and Jared were throughout their journeys.

It’s a very uncomfortable experience, but it puts you in Wendy’s mindset. I think that, for that reason, the film becomes more of a visceral experience. That’s what we intended.

We do apologise to audiences for that, but it honours the pain Wendy went through. What happened to her was a terrible experience, and she was just one person caught up in it. I don’t think we would have truly reflected the full toll it took on her and others if we’d looked at it coldly, from a distance.

Jared, as the film’s director, did you ever challenge any of Wendy’s opinions?

Jared: I didn’t come out of the rabbit hole until after Wendy’s passing, when I had some mental health battles of my own. I put the burden on myself of figuring out what to do with the film after having undertaken it with Wendy and then experiencing her sudden passing.

I wasn’t seeing clearly. I wasn’t seeing the world the way I see it now while I was down that rabbit hole with Wendy. We were just trying to uncover an impossible truth, so I never had the opportunity to challenge any of her opinions.

I feel like the story room within the film was a good space to show the conflict I carried and the tension between wanting to honour Wendy during the film and believing Wendy for what she believed, without necessarily believing what she believed.

So, yeah, it was tricky. But going back to your last question, I think Dr Paul Brown is the closest thing we have to an expert in this film. He offers incredible insight, and I feel like we ask audiences to suspend logic or reality as we go further down the rabbit hole.

Paul comes in and out of the film to guide us on what not to take on board. In the film, we’re all influencing each other, and then things get more extreme with the next statement from someone like Andrew McGregor. So, while we don’t come back with the hard facts of the official story, we signal to the audience that it’s okay if they’re not keeping up. It’s getting pretty wild.

Psychiatrist Dr Paul Brown contributes so much to this film and really grounds the psychology of most of its participants, including yourself, Jared. How important was his contribution to the film?

Jared He actually found us. It was probably four or five years ago. We had a page on Documentary Australia when we were trying to raise funding for the project, and we received an email from Dr Paul saying, “I always find myself looking at a folder on my desktop with Wendy’s name. How’s she going?”

I had to break it to him that Wendy had passed away and that we were still pursuing the film. From there, Dr Paul and I kept in contact.

Then, last year, when we set out to film the interviews, he was at the top of our list. I knew he’d be able to offer great insights into A, Wendy, and B, the systemic problems as he saw them through his professional lens. The next step was putting myself in the interviewee’s chair and asking him to analyse how I’d come to land in the same place.

Your sessions with Paul weren’t intended for the film?

Jared: No, they came about because of a problem or challenge we had in figuring out how to tell my story. I feel like I probably created more nos than yeses for Ben. I was adamant about not doing a voiceover because it just felt too clean and structured for a story that isn’t clean.

One of the devices we came up with was the story room, as suggested by Ben, where we spent three days and filmed the process. The other was switching seats with Dr Paul and having him analyse me in a way that gives the audience some insight into how another person can end up in the same place as Wendy, and also how you can get out.

Both Dr Paul’s involvement and the story room are masterstrokes as filmmaking devices.

Jared: Thank you.

Ben: Thank you for acknowledging that.

There’s a scene in the film where you’re in your hotel room and worried someone might be lurking outside, but were there other moments when you were concerned about your safety, considering the information you were digging into?

Jared: There were many. I was highly paranoid throughout the entire period. When I first met Wendy, she was highly paranoid, and I think we both unknowingly fed off that.

Before I arrived in Queensland for the interview, Wendy told me, “I haven’t told anyone you’re coming, just out of concern for your safety.” So the whole preface to the meeting was already built around paranoia, fear and looking over my shoulder.

The deeper I dove into what I thought I was uncovering, which they didn’t want me to uncover, the more it became almost self-fulfilling in a way. The retrieval of the boxes of information is a perfect example. The police took ownership of Lindsay’s shipping container, which we believed was the one thing they knew we had. We didn’t stop to look at it from a different perspective.

Fear and paranoia ran throughout this project. Even before I met Wendy, the few people I reached out to had warned me against pursuing the story. That stopped me from pursuing it for a couple of months, but ultimately, I kept coming back to Wendy, her incredible story and bravery, and her troublemaker attitude. She wanted to talk about something difficult for her own sake and, hopefully, for the sake of others.

Ben, I don’t want to come across as being too dramatic just for the sake of it, but was there, or is there still, any concern for the safety of anyone else involved in this film?

Ben: No, I don’t think so. When this project first came up, it kind of scared me because of the taboo around the subject matter. There’s obviously a lot of pain surrounding it, and there are a lot of people who just don’t want to talk about it. I understand that, and I understand why that’s the case.

I don’t think there are any safety issues. It was important for us to protect the mental health and safety of the film’s participants, Jared and everyone else involved, and to make sure they were prepared to continue with the making of Aftermath.

But I would say that you could never make something as visceral as this if you were making a drama. It really does put you in a position where you feel there’s a madness to it. Jared and Wendy are in the middle of this story, fearing for their lives. You get a sense of the stakes involved for them, and while you might not experience those stakes to the same degree, you can understand them.

Ultimately, what we want to do with this film is acknowledge that Wendy was left behind. I also recently made a project about Robodebt, which I think is a very similar situation. There’s a whole lot of people who were left behind, weren’t supported and were gaslit into thinking they were the problem.

Wendy also needed support, and at the same time, she was supporting other people who needed it. So it’s a really heartening story, but at its core, it’s about the human connection that was lacking in her life.

I don’t doubt that this is a pretty confronting film and journey, but I ask audiences to sit with it because it ultimately lands in a very humanistic place, which is where we wanted it to land. You get an honest sense of these people, who are very complex characters. Often in society, they’re easy to dismiss.

I want to lighten things up a little here by asking you about Juli Heinze, the actor who plays Wendy in the re-enactment scenes. Can you tell us about working with Juli? She’s so great here.

Jared: Juli was incredible. We didn’t have a long list of people to cast to play Wendy, but there was something about Juli’s energy and bravery in taking on the role.

Juli asked no questions and didn’t hesitate when asked to cut her hair and colour it to match Wendy’s. She was all in from the very beginning.

We didn’t do any rehearsals. We wrote scenes and ideas for what she would shoot, and Juli responded organically on set. She was really great to work with, and I’m very fortunate to have met and worked with her.

Mentally, I spiral easily when reading stories of mass killings in Australia, going all the way back to Indigenous massacres perpetrated by colonisers, and especially Bryant’s, because I was 12 at the time. That’s an age when we really start to observe and absorb the world around us. So I’d really like to take the final moments of this interview to tell you both that I genuinely hope you’re looking after your mental health during the final stages of this film, leading up to its release and its introduction to audiences. I hope you get to take a breather between press interviews, too.

Ben Thank you. Thank you. We did a couple of interviews back to back today, but I would say the producer, Rebecca Barry, and the whole Media Stockade team have put a really fantastic framework of support in place. It’s been there from the beginning, with people we could call and support available for the film’s participants.

I think Jared has carried a lot of that responsibility. Given the paranoia among some of the participants, he’s the one who really needed to be there front and centre, and he carried a lot of that weight.

That’s partly how I saw my role: to be there for Jared, to help him find some perspective and hopefully offer him some support. The production has been incredible in providing that support, and it’s always been on offer. It’s been really fantastic. That aspect has been very important for this production. Jared has obviously paid a big price for telling this story.

Jared We partnered with Screen Well, which has been incredible. They’re a great resource and a great port of call, and their support has been available to everybody. Rebecca also has a background in mental health support.

I feel like we’ve been wrapped in the biggest, warmest arms as we’ve tackled something like this. It goes beyond the immediate creative team, participants and crew. It’s such a great feeling to know that we’re being looked after and that we’ll continue to be looked after throughout the rollout of this film.

It’s a tricky subject, but one I feel is very important to talk about. I’ve had close friends pass away after struggling with their mental health, so knowing that a film like this might help open up conversations about mental health is important to me.

Meet Jared and Ben

Jared Nicholson

Director, Writer, Cinematographer and Co-founder

Jared Nicholson is a director, cinematographer and co-founder of Run Wild Productions. Beginning his career documenting skateboarding, Jared has developed a diverse body of work spanning commercial production, documentary and factual television. He has worked as a series shooter on some of Australia’s biggest reality programs, including Survivor, Married at First Sight, The Voice and Beauty & the Geek. His factual credits include ABC’s Stackorama!, Nine’s For the Love of Pets and SBS’s Australia’s Sleep Revolution with Dr Michael Mosley. His documentary Starting From Scratch won Best Short Documentary at the 2019 ReelOzInd! Film Festival. In 2020, he was an AIDC Access mentee for Aftermath.

Ben Lawrence

Director, Executive Producer and Screenwriter

Ben Lawrence is an award-winning Australian director, screenwriter and producer whose films have screened at major festivals worldwide, including Toronto, Busan, Sheffield and Sydney. He is a two-time AACTA Award nominee, four-time Australian Writers’ Guild Award winner and 2022 Walkley Documentary Award nominee. His feature film Hearts and Bones, starring Hugo Weaving, premiered at Toronto and earned him the Australian Directors’ Guild’s highest honour in 2020. His documentary Ghosthunter won Best Documentary at the Sydney Film Festival. More recent work includes Ithaka, an AACTA Best Documentary nominee, and ABC factual series Stuff the British Stole and Exposed. His work spans feature films, documentaries, investigative journalism and podcasts.

Aftermath will screen at the Adelaide Film Festival. Details here.

If you enjoy Cinema Australia as much as I loved publishing it, please consider supporting Cinema Australia’scommitment to the Australian screen industry via a donation below.

I strive to shine a light on Australian movies, giving voice to emerging talent and established artists.

This important work is made possible through the support of Cinema Australia readers.

Without corporate interests or paywalls, Cinema Australia is committed to remaining free to read, watch and listen to, always.

If you can, please consider making a contribution. It takes less than a minute, and your support will make a significant impact in sustaining Cinema Australia as the much-loved publication that it is.

Thank you.

Matthew Eeles
Founder and Editor.

Make a donation here.