by FIlmInk Staff
Somewhere After, the debut documentary from Nicola Macindoe, had its world premiere on Saturday 18 July at Cinema Nova as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival and was announced yesterday as winner of the festival’s Wild Card Award. The 79 minute documentary marks Macindoe’s feature directorial debut.
As described by the festival’s jury member, Veronika Dvořáčková: “With remarkable sensitivity and formal originality, this film turns a collective experience into an intimate exploration of memory, vulnerability, and transformation. Blending documentary, animation, and a unique temporal structure, it offers a fresh perspective on a subject that seemed impossible to revisit, revealing the enduring emotional echoes of an extraordinary moment in history. The award goes to Somewhere After, directed by Nicola Macindoe.”
Somewhere After follows seven Australians — including a clinical psychologist, Australian radio veteran Dave Gibson (known for Australia’s Funniest Home Videos and The Doug Mulray Show), First Nations wellbeing advocate Dr. Georgia Durmush, a musician, a support worker, a banking software consultant and a student — who in 2020 shared their hopes, dreams and fears and chose a landscape to reflect their experience of isolation. Three years later, they listen back with vulnerability and humour, confronting a universal question: can we use difficult times to become who we hope to be?
The world premiere brought together the film’s creative team and several of the participants who met for the first time on the morning of the premiere for their first audience — including 8 crew and 3 participants who flew in from interstate.
One attendee reflected after the screening: “I was nervous watching a film about COVID being so traumatising, as someone who lived in Melbourne, but I found it so weirdly, like, inspirational. It really makes you reflect back on the time, where we’re at now, and what we’re doing with our lives.”
The film has also drawn early praise from critics and festival programmers. Susannah Duff, Festival Producer at Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, said: “What makes Somewhere After so affecting is its generosity. Rather than looking back at the pandemic as a historical event, the film gently examines what it means to live through uncertainty and emerge changed by it.”
A post-screening Q&A featured participant Sid Norris; writer/director/producer/editor Nicola Macindoe; producer and assistant director Lachlan MacMahon; director of photography Jesse Phillips; and composer Eamon Roche, moderated by Annie McLoughlin jury member and host of 3CR’s Showreel Program. Discussion centred on how the participants were selected and the film’s distinctive visual language, which combines news archive footage, shot and sourced landscape imagery, empty cityscapes, and hand-drawn animation to render the participants’ inner worlds.
Asked how he became involved in the project, participant Sid Norris recalled: “Nicky and I knew each other from way back… I think I had made a passing glib remark that I quite enjoyed it [isolation], and I think she found that interesting. And then I get a call a while later to do an interview.”
Director Nicola Macindoe picked up the story from her side: “If you make a documentary and interview anybody, you have to be prepared to completely change direction on what the story is going to be about. I was really curious about Sid because he’d made that glib remark, and also because he’d released some music on Spotify very early on in lockdown — I thought, ‘he’s doing what we’re all supposed to be doing with this time, I wonder how.’ That’s where it all started.”
Director of photography Jesse Phillips spoke to the visual approach: “One idea we talked about when we started working on the project was the idea of mixed media…to create a world of feeling, an imagined world. It was super important for us to make something that felt elevated and otherworldly but also had continuity to it, like one organism.”
Composer Eamon Roche echoed the sentiment: “It was the same approach with the music — trying to piece together different instruments in a way that felt cohesive. I was thankful to be brought onto this project very early, so we were all on the same page to get the tone right.”
The world premiere marks the beginning of Somewhere After’s festival run. The film has been submitted to festivals locally and internationally and is currently seeking distribution.
