Antony Starr, Joel Edgerton, Felicity Price and Teresa Palmer, cast members of Australian film Wish You Were Here, at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Picture: AP Source: AP
Christine Westwood, The Australian, reports
AUSTRALIAN filmmakers have reaffirmed the country's reputation for drama at the Sundance Film Festival in the US, with Sydney's Kieran Darcy-Smith's psychological feature premiering to positive reactions.
The first-time feature writer/director's drama, Wish You Were Here, starring Joel Edgerton and Teresa Palmer, opened the World Cinema Dramatic competition in front of a packed audience at the Utah event, which began on Friday.
"I guess the nicest thing (about being selected for Sundance) is the validation that comes with it," said Darcy-Smith. "To have the Sundance selectors not only invite us into competition but also to offer us the opening night screening, it's hard to describe."
The film, shot in South East Asia, follows four 30-something Australians who take a holiday in Cambodia. When one of them goes missing, the lives of everyone are transformed forever.
Edgerton's brother Nash, meanwhile, stars in and is co-author of Bear (with Animal Kingdom's David Michod), which has been selected for the festival's short film competition.
Both films have come out of directors collective Blue Tongue Films, founded by the Edgerton brothers and Darcy-Smith, with Michod a more recent member.
Introducing Wish You Were Here, director of programming Trevor Groth described Blue Tongue as "talented, cool, rough neck filmmakers''.
"All I ever wanted was for the story to move people in a positive way and for them to truly enjoy those two hours in the cinema,'' said Darcy-Smith. "It is an enormously prestigious platform from which to launch your first movie and there are a great many opportunities that come with that. It's a nice feeling.''
Such was the interest in the film that more than two-thirds of the audience stayed back for the Q&A with the filmmakers.
Nash Edgerton's and Michod's short, Bear, is a gem of a short film.
When asked about establishing character in short format, co-writer Michod explained: "You just make them feel true or at least true to the world of the film.
"Nash had an idea for a short and asked me if I wanted to help him write it. I'd just finished Animal Kingdom and wanted to start writing again but couldn't remember how. Bear seemed like a good way to get back into the swing.
"Nash is exceptionally good at creating visceral cinema experiences. He knows what experiences will work and he's really good at making them work. My main job is just to make the connecting tissue feel natural and plausible to make it invisible basically.''
Bear was selected as one of nine films for the Cannes Film Festival 2011 Short Film Competition and received a "great reception there'', according to Nash Edgerton.
"People responded beyond what my expectations for the film were, so it was a lot of fun to be there.''
Sundance was founded by Robert Redford in 1981 with the mission to support independent films that "inform, inspire, and unite diverse populations around the globe''. Opening the festival, Redford said: "We are, and always have been, a festival about the filmmakers. So what are they doing? What are they saying? They are making statements about the changing world we are living in. Some are straight-forward, some novel and some offbeat but always interesting. One can never predict. We know only at the end, and I love that.''
Sundance's main feature awards are announced on January 28, while short film awards ceremony will be held on January 24.
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