If the Academy Awards had a category for most difficult movie to make on a shoestring budget, Australia's Bentley Dean and Martin Butler would be favourites to win this year.
Luckily for the filmmaking duo, they are strong chances to win an Oscar anyway for their romantic drama Tanna.
Dean and Butler were nominated on Tuesday in the foreign language category, making history as the first Australians to score nods in a category usually dominated by European filmmakers.
"No other Australian film has done it so it is history making," Dean told AAP on Tuesday.
Dean, his wife Junita, sons River, 4, Atlas, 2, and Butler lived with a tribe in Yakel on a mountain in the secluded Vanuatu island of Tanna in the south Pacific, listened to their stories and observed their culture.
"They have made a very deliberate decision there to live the way of their ancestors," Dean said.
"The women still wear grass skirts and the men wear penis sheaths, they tend the fields like their ancestors did, and still shoot with bows and arrows."
One day, Dean and Butler heard the men singing a moving song about two lovers.
The song was inspired by the true, tragic story of a young couple in the village in the mid-1980s who defied the chief's wish to enter into an arranged marriage with other partners.
Dean and Butler set about filming a scripted movie based on the story, with the villagers acting and speaking in the Navhal and Nafe languages.
Not only did the tribe members in the film have no acting experience, but they had never watched a movie before.
Dean and Butler also did not understand the native tongue, so needed a local who lived on another island to translate.
It was a two-person film crew, with Dean shooting on a hand-held C300 Canon camera and Butler holding the boom.
Tanna is competing with Toni Erdmann (Germany), The Salesman (Iran), A Man Called Ove (Sweden) and Land of Mine (Denmark) for the foreign language Oscar.
In what will likely generate a red carpet scene, Dean and Butler will take some of the cast members and the village chief Lingai Kawia to the February 26 Academy Awards ceremony at Holllywood's star-studded Dolby Theatre.
Dean, despite bad mobile phone coverage in Tanna, managed to call the chief and tell him about the Oscar nomination.
"It's hard to convey the significance of the nomination because they couldn't care less, really," Dean laughed.
