In 2014, local writer and director Sotiris Dounoukos scored big at the Toronto International Film Festival. His short film Un seul Corps (A Single Body) became a highlight of the festival, and he walked away with an award for Best International Short Film from one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world.
Dounoukos’ next film, his debut feature, will be an adaptation of Helen Garner’s true-crime best seller Joe Cinque’s Consolation.
On 26 October 1997, Australian National University student Anu Singh killed her boyfriend, Joe Cinque, by lacing his coffee with Rohypnol and injecting him with heroin at a dinner party where some of the guests had heard about the plan to murder Cinque. Despite this, none of them warned him.
It took 36 hours for Cinque to die while Singh watched and waited.
Dounoukos’ film, in post-production as of December, is set to become ever more topical as Singh returns again this week to our national headlines.
Singh, released from prison in 2001, returned to jail for breaching bail conditions, and acquitted finally in 2004 after challenging her re-imprisonment on a technicality, and who is currently writing a PHD at the University of Sydney, is seeking atonement for the crime that brought her infamy.
In an interview with news.com.au this week, Singh said: “There’s no rational motivation at all. I was mentally unwell, and I still grapple with that. I still grapple with the whys. One of the psychiatrists mentioned a state of disassociation, perhaps, like disassociated from reality. I don’t know. There’s no rational explanation.”
It is both the boldness and psychological complexities of Singh’s act which made Garner’s book such a fascinating case-study, and it is these same complexities which interest Dounoukos as a filmmaker at work on the same subject.
“I’m interested in alienation and isolation, but also in the opposing ideas of connection and unity,” says Dounoukos. “It’s the tension between these opposing forces that interests me dramatically and thematically at every level.”
If what provokes Dounoukos’ interest in the case still further is his background as a Canberra native, what motivated him to select Garner’s book for his debut film are the wider implications and ramifications he feels are implicit in Joe Cinque’s death.
“The community Helen entered to tell Joe’s story was where I was raised and educated,” he says. “Yet it is still bigger than a Canberra story, raising questions about the nature of community and collective responsibility, and leaving you breathless at the end.”
In her interview with news.com.au, Singh expressed concerns that the film would put her once again in the spotlight.
“I kind of fear, am I going to be able to walk down the street?” she said, while adding that she had not been contacted by the film production. “I do fear that because it’s based on Helen’s book, that it won’t adequately explore the mental health aspects.”
Dounoukos, however, does seem determined to get to the heart of the matter. “It’s a book that means a great deal to a lot of people, so we took the time we needed to get the script right. There is still a lot to discuss about what happened and why.”
Sotiris Dounoukos’ Joe Cinque’s Consolation, in which Maggie Naouri (Wentworth Prison) will star as Anu Singh, will be released in cinemas in 2016.
Hi, I am so interested in seeing this film. When and where will it be showing?