The imagination and technical proficiency of Australia’s emerging filmmakers never ceases to amaze the BBFF programming team, whose challenging job is to select just 10 films from all those submitted by these visual storytellers for entry into the Festival’s Young Australian Filmmaker of the Year Competition.
The competition, which has run every year since 2007, is designed to encourage fledgling filmmakers and reward those artists whose work embodies the boldness, intelligence, sensitivity and flair that bode well for their future in the demanding, competitive – and endlessly rewarding – world of cinema. It has proved a launchpad into the industry for innumerable young creatives.
The line-up of talented filmmakers in this year’s Festival – the 18th – has once again impressed the BBFF team with their display of precisely those qualities, creating cinematic experiences that go beyond entertainment to become art.
Urgent contemporary issues as well as age-old mysteries of the human condition are explored with wit and no little wisdom in this selection. Among them are the matters of death and grieving, sexual identity (and bullying), the creative impulse, loneliness, mental health, peer pressure and the challenges faced by migrants.
Alienation – the consequences of standing outside the norm – is one of the themes explored in several of the films, whether it be from preference, prejudice, trauma or, in Georgia Brogan’s young protagonist, Bee, an illness, in this case, anorexia. Georgia hopes her film, Period Party, will help to destigmatise eating disorders with its blend of absurdist humour and poignancy. The 22-year-old from Stanmore, NSW, was a successful photographer before venturing into film; her strong cinematic visual style made her the youngest ever winner of the Australian Life Photo Prize in 2021. Period Party had its Australian premiere at the Academy Awards-qualifying St Kilda Film Festival in June this year, screening in the Top Shorts category on opening night.
Alienation in the form of loneliness within the family is the trigger in Clown, from 24-year-old Aarushi Chowdhury [above]. Hints of horror and some slapstick humour help this coming-of-age story imaginatively explore family dynamics and a child’s creative response to isolation and her attempts to fit in. Writer-director Aarushi’s debut film premiered at SXSW in Sydney, and she is currently in pre-production for a proof-of-concept developed through AFTRS and Screen Australia’s Talent Camp. She recently wrote research for Tony Ayres Productions. Clown expresses her fascination with chaos in the everyday, and with the people who create it. It is set to screen at Cannes Indie Shorts in November.
Getting older in a fickle, trend-driven art world is the basis of unfashionable sculptor Em’s angst in Hayden Flynn’s Chook Shed [below], a plaintive and witty satire on ageism and the whims of the art market. Hayden, 22, says that Em’s struggle to stay relevant and marketable reflects his own personal fears regarding the fragility of his artistic identity. Chook Shed nevertheless reflects his passion for grassroots storytelling, holistic narrative/production style and a firm foundation in documentary works, as well as his multidisciplinary background in music and design.
The two young protagonists in Dogshift, from Melbourne-based Matheus Healey, are not so much out of time as out of place – in a foreign landscape, slaving in a thankless job in a stressful inner-city restaurant kitchen lorded over by a bullying chef. VCA graduate Matheus, 21, has worked as a director and cinematographer on a range of projects, from his own narrative work to commercials and music videos. The son of an immigrant family, he says Dogshift is personal to him, and he wanted to explore the outsider’s struggle to find meaningful relationships, especially in an age when we are all inextricably ‘connected’ through technology.
Connecting in football in Australia too often means just one thing – sanctioned violence: but South Australian Tom Lawrence-Doyle, 22, wanted to show what can lie beneath the surface of Australia’s most macho athletes. His film, Bulldog, tells the story of two country footy club players discovering an attraction to each other, and how they each deal with their vulnerability and fear of discovery. A student in Creative Arts: Screen at Flinders University, Tom says film has always been a big part of his life, an escapist comfort, but Bulldog is an honest and up-close look at what is terrifyingly real for many young people. The film has screened at the Adelaide Film Festival, Flickerfest Bondi and the Perth Queer Film Festival.
Brisbane based Felix Lovell, 20, made his directorial debut in 2020 with his short film, Malingee, and has since directed three shorts to domestic and international acclaim. While studying Film and Screen Media Production at Griffith Film School, Felix co-founded the hybrid art gallery, Misplaced Curiosities, with producer Eleanor Somerville. The pair put the gallery’s earning towards Felix’s entry in this year’s YAF Competition, The Scatterer, a desert-noir tale of generational trauma, memory and death. Felix is an award-winning director of photography, praised by the Australian Cinematographer’s Society for his work on Solidago (2022).
Muraya Moore’s film Blood Sisters asks: How far will a pretty newcomer go to fit in with a group of beauty-treatment obsessed young teenagers? The title gives us a hint in this scary super-contemporary story. Muraya, 24, is a Japanese-Australian woman seeking to foster a more diverse and inclusive film sector. Muraya’s short films Lemons and Prima have screened widely at festivals around Australia. Prima was nominated for Best Tertiary Short Fiction at the ATOM awards and won Best Cinematography at the Gold Coast Film Festival in the Emerge Showcase. She directed and produced the interview series, Power Nadeshiko, and has directed several music videos for Australian artists.
Rachael Porthouse’s entry in the YAF competition received a Special Mention in the Best Fiction Category at the Media Arts and Production Showcase 2024. The Receptionist, a creepily compelling case study in male power and harassment in workplace, and gaslighting at home, is the second film featured in the Showcase from the 22-year-old Sydney based writer, director and Bachelor of Communication (Honours) graduate from the UTS. Her third-year capstone piece, Funeral Walk, also earned a spot in 2023. Rachael is deeply committed to making films focused on women’s stories and experiences, especially alongside other female creatives in the industry.
Australia’s catastrophic bushfires have cost many lives, but for some the threat of losing their home and memories is worth the risk of staying behind. Former Northern Rivers resident Tahlia Magistrale, 25, looks at what lies behind such decisions in Even the Ghosts Have Gone. Tahlia is not a newcomer to the Byron Bay Film Festival, where her film Swings & Roundabouts was shortlisted in 2022 and went on to win the Student Fiction category at the Sony Catchlight Film Festival. A 2022 Media Arts and Production graduate from UTS, Tahlia currently works in Sydney across a range of film, television and advertising projects.
Letting go is also the theme of Handhold, from Melbourne’s Yianni Rowlands, in which a son hopes that shared grief will help him bridge the gap with his estranged father. Yianni, 24, has experience as a writer and director of short films, commercials, music videos, and video art. He began early, garnishing accolades for his stop-motion animation at Trop Jr in 2012 and 2016. He is also a musician, collaborating with the likes of punk rock band Amyl and the Sniffers and conceptual artist Marco Fusinato. A Victorian College of the Arts graduate in Fine Arts in Film and Television, he has several short films to his name and more in the pipeline.
Join BBFF in celebrating our exhilarating showcase of human experience, a testament to the power of cinema and its ability to connect, challenge and inspire, and evidence that Australian cinema is in good hands.
The BBFF2024 Young Australian Filmmaker of the Year screening takes place at 2.40pm on Saturday 19 October at Byron Palace, with some filmmakers in attendance.
The 18th Byron Bay International Film Festival runs from October 18-27.
