West Coast Visions serves up Prawn Curry Christmas – Charmaine Murray and Yasmin Kassim’s scripted feature Prawn Curry Christmas has been selected as the 2025 recipient of Screenwest’s coveted West Coast Visions, supported by $1.5 million.
The richest filmmaking initiative in Australia for emerging filmmakers, West Coast Visions is designed to uncover, inspire and develop talented Western Australian filmmakers with distinctive visions for a debut feature film for theatrical release. It provides production funding for first-time feature film directors in Western Australia.
Screenwest provides successful recipients with production funding of $1 million via grant funding from Lotterywest and the Department of Creative Industries, Tourism and Sport, and Screen Australia has pre-committed $500,000 in equity to the initiative.
Written by Yasmin Kassim and Menik Gooneratne, who will also star in the film, Prawn Curry Christmas is a 90-minute comedy directed by Charmaine Murray and produced by Yasmin Kassim, Menik Gooneratne, Leanne Tonkes, Melissa Russo and Mike Cowap.
Set to be filmed in Perth and the South-West, Prawn Curry Christmas is inspired by the lived experiences of Kassim and Gooneratne, which brings authenticity to the narrative with a distinctly South Asian lens.
The film follows two estranged sisters living abroad who rush home to Western Australia for one last family Christmas when a text message from their mother goes awry and they mistakenly think their father is dying.
Director Charmaine Murray said:
“Being named a West Coast Visions recipient is a massive honour, especially knowing the incredible filmmakers who’ve come before me. To be recognised alongside that legacy is surreal. As a director from WA, I’m proud to be telling a story rooted in where I’m from, with the kind of bold, personal filmmaking this initiative champions.
“West Coast Visions is a game-changer for Prawn Curry Christmas. It gives us the resources and creative freedom to make the film the way it was meant to be made – character-driven, culturally specific, and unapologetically fun. It means we can support WA crew and talent, shoot on location, and bring this unique, proudly local story to life with real production value.”
Writer-Producer Yasmin Kassim said:
“I’m thrilled — and jumping up and down with gratitude — to be named a West Coast Visions recipient. With Prawn Curry Christmas, we’ll create the kind of joyful, multicultural comedy that reflects a vibrant side of Western Australia not often seen on screen. It’s full of heart, colour, and big laughs, and we hope it will make a lot of people feel truly seen — maybe for the first time — in an Aussie film.”
Screenwest Chief Executive Officer Rikki Lea Bestall said:
“West Coast Visions is our anchor development program and has served as a career launchpad for many Western Australian filmmakers.
We are proud to offer $1 million a year to the next generation of filmmakers, and I’m looking forward to seeing the Prawn Curry Christmas team bring their creative vision together.”
Screen Australia Director of Narrative Content Louise Gough said:
“Screen Australia is excited to support Screenwest’s West Coast Visions, which provides a career-launching opportunity for selected West Australian filmmakers to make their debut feature film. Prawn Curry Christmas is a Christmas cracker of a story with laughs, heart and a messy joyous family at its core, and we look forward to this talented team popping the bon-bons and bringing this story to life.”
Prawn Curry Christmas is slated to go into production in 2026.
West Coast Visions has helped launch the careers of numerous filmmakers over the past 20 years, with recent projects like How to Please a Woman, Sweet As and Birthright achieving significant recognition and distribution. Birthright has recently been announced as a finalist in the CineFestOZ $100,000 film prize, with the winner to be announced in September.
Production credit: Prawn Curry Christmas is a joint venture between Kassim, Gooneratne, Tonkes and Russo (Sense & Centsability) in association with Princess Pictures. Major production funding from Screenwest, Lotterywest and the Western Australian Government, with support from Screen Australia.
Media Release – Screenwest
Link to Screenwest HERE
TV Central Screen Australia content HERE
West Coast Visions serves up Prawn Curry Christmas
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