Birdeater is the latest Australian horror film to wow international audiences. (Supplied: Umbrella Entertainment)
A group of friends gets together for a weekend in the country to celebrate one of their forthcoming nuptials.
It’s a bucks party in the bush with booze, drugs and a blow-up doll — what could go wrong?
Well, plenty, as shown in the new Australian horror flick, Birdeater.
It’s the debut feature film from Sydney-based friends Jack Clark and Jim Weir, who told ABC RN’s The Screen Show that many of the film’s details were inspired by real life.
Clark, who attended a Sydney private school, says: “There are definitely parts of it that are … fragments of stories or often moments of parties that we wanted to re-create. There were never whole images of people, but we definitely stole wholesale from people in our social circles.”
In Birdeater, Mackenzie Fearnley and Shabana Azeez play Louie and Irene, a young couple who meet on a Sydney beach and soon become engaged.
As their relationship unfolds on screen, however, we can’t help but notice something is awry.
Just what that is slowly comes to light as the action shifts to Louie’s bucks party — a notorious setting for antisocial behaviour.
“The whole idea [of a bucks party] is: ‘Let’s partake in this bad behaviour together and thereby excuse all of us,'” Clark says.
Jack Clark and Jim Weir pictured on location during filming for Birdeater.(Supplied: Umbrella Entertainment)
Only, in Birdeater, Louie takes the “super modern” step of inviting Irene and his friend’s girlfriend, Grace.
The result is a disturbing re-evaluation of contemporary masculinity that explores issues including emotional abuse and coercive control.
“It’s … reflective of a national male identity that’s perhaps in crisis,” Clark says.
Patterns of manipulative behaviour
Louie comes across as an archetypal nice guy, but that doesn’t make him harmless.
Seemingly nice guys often get away with hurting other people because they conceal their actions behind a pleasant façade, Weir says.
“It’s a pattern of subtly manipulative behaviour that you can only really observe over time,” he adds.
“That’s what we were trying to explore in the film — we have characters who when you meet them, you’re like, ‘OK, this guy’s trouble. This is the guy you have to worry about.’ And those are the guys that end up being total non-threats.”
In Louie, Clark and Weir wanted to create a character who was relatable, likeable and convincing in his protestations that his bad behaviour was just a big misunderstanding — he’s a nice guy, after all.
“You often find in films like these that talk about masculinity that there’s a distancing effect. There is a point in which a male audience can draw a line and then distance themselves from that character,” Clark says.
The filmmakers wanted Louie (played by Mackenzie Fearnley, pictured) to be a character the audience naturally sided with.(Supplied: Umbrella Entertainment)
But male audiences don’t get to distance themselves from Louie. Rather than a caricature of toxic masculinity, he’s drawn from the filmmakers’ thoughts, experiences and relationships — “our own worst mental gymnastics”, as Clark puts it.
The filmmakers knew that the film’s success hinged on the plausibility of Irene and Louie’s relationship, despite his problematic behaviour.
They cast Shabana Azeez (In Limbo) in the role of Irene first.
“She needed to have that immediate chemistry with someone who could essentially trap her in this relationship,” Clark says.
Mackenzie Fearnley (Operation Buffalo) provided that spark.
“As soon as she read opposite Mackenzie, she came and told us straight away, ‘That was it. That was the first time I felt like I could actually fall for what somebody is telling me. I felt like he was telling me the truth,'” Clark says.
The chemistry between Azeez (pictured, with Ben Hunter as Dylan in the background) and Fearnley was “essential”, Clark says.(Supplied: Umbrella Entertainment)
The casting of Louie’s friends Charlie (Jack Bannister) and Dylan (Ben Hunter) was equally strategic.
Clark says he wanted to present the trio of high school mates as a homogenous unit of young, white, privileged men.
“We knew they all should look similar … and everybody else in the ensemble would be othered from them in some sense, whether or not it was their gender, their [sexual] orientation, their social position, their height,” he says.
An homage to 70s classic Wake in Fright
Clark and Weir both first encountered the 1971 cult Australian horror film, Wake in Fright, while at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS), where they met.
“It was a real kind of seminal watch,” Weir says.
He describes the film — a classic of Australian New Wave cinema directed by Canadian director Ted Kotcheff, about a teacher getting stuck in a remote outback mining town after accruing a bad gambling debt — as a “subconscious” influence on Birdeater.
“We wrote the film and went through pretty much all the pre-production without mentioning Wake in Fright once,” he says.
The film’s influence became more explicit when shooting started and Weir brought in his own Wake in Fright poster — normally pinned to his bedroom wall — to use as a prop to decorate a character’s apartment.
“[At that point] we did realise how much we had unconsciously taken from Wake in Fright,” he says.
Both films place urban professionals in unfamiliar settings far from the city.
Wake in Fright was filmed in the arid landscape surrounding Broken Hill (and famously featured graphic footage of a real-life kangaroo hunt), while Birdeater takes the claustrophobic bush surrounding the village of St Albans in the Hawkesbury as its setting.
Weir says the Birdeater budget was “very low — a few hundred thousand”.(Supplied: Umbrella Entertainment)
And both films cast a critical eye over toxic male behaviour.
Wake in Fright calls on archetypes of masculinity, such as the lone cowboy or the drover, that held sway over the 20th century and shaped our national identity, Clark says.
“Our ideals about mateship, about camaraderie, our sense of humour, our sense of irony — a lot of it stemmed from that [archetype],” he says.
However, Clark believes our ideas around masculinity have changed with the times, and millennial and gen Z audiences no longer see themselves in films like Wake in Fright.
“That man no longer seems to have a place in contemporary gender [and identity] politics,” he says.
“[We were trying to] reckon with that image [of masculinity] in today’s youth.”
Independent Australian psychological thriller Birdeaterhas secured a release date in national cinemas of 18 July, with the trailer and poster released simultaneously by distributor Umbrella.
Birdeater is the debut film of first-time directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir, who saw the darkly comedic film sell out sessions at SXSW Austin, MIFF and Cinefest Oz, before winning the Audience Award for Best Australian Narrative Feature at 2023 Sydney Film Festival.
The film follows a nervous bride-to-be (Shabana Azeez) who is invited to her own fiancé’s (Mackenzie Fearnley) Buck’s Party. When uncomfortable details about their relationship are exposed, the celebration night takes a turn for the feral (indeed, the film has been described using that word by many a critic).
Still from Birdeater. Image: Umbrella Films.
‘Taking inspiration from Australian new wave cinema, Birdeater is an unapologetic look at how Australia’s iconic masculinity identity has become incompatible with contemporary gender politics,’ reads the official press release. ‘Bringing outback cinema to the North Shore private schoolboy, it comments on co-dependency in both romantic relationships and platonic friendships in an iconic bush location peppered with nangs, joyrides and ketamine.’
Watch the trailer for Birdeater below:
Birdeater is produced by Breathless Films, a company established by Ulysses Oliver and Ben Ferris in 2020.
‘Told from the Australian male perspective, the story draws us in to feel like one of the boys, only to turn and make us feel culpable,’ said Ulysses Oliver.’ This film is not just an entertaining, feral, genre-bending joyride; it’s a necessary conversation to foster understanding and change.’
‘We’ve been amazed to see our film resonate so deeply with audiences around the world, despite being so specific to Australia,’ Directors Jim Clark and Jack Weir said. ‘Birdeater is an intense, wild, and challenging film, and we’re delighted to finally be screening in Aussie cinemas.’
Given that Jim Weir and Jack Clark‘s frighteningly uncomfortable Birdeater is an Australian chiller set in the outback (at least for the majority of its running time), audiences are justified in thinking it could fall in line with other brutality-in-the-bush titles like Picnic at Hanging Rock or even Wolf Creek. The more accurate comparison though would be Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 Ozploitation offering Wake In Fright, with several sequences serving as visual nods throughout, as well as the general thematic of its central figure crumbling into moral degradation; the Wake In Fright poster hanging in the background of a character’s apartment here truly driving the inspiration home.
From the opening it’s evident that something isn’t sitting quite right with the union of Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley) and Irene (Shabana Azeez). He stares directly at the camera from the opening second, with the reveal that he’s eyeing her down at a beach party of sorts, leading to what Birdeater initially frames as something of a loving relationship. We are witness to a montage of laughter and sex, and the indication that he has proposed, but slowly but surely a sense of discomfort lingers over their actions. She appears too scared to be left alone. He promises he won’t leave her side, but then does so after drugging her into induced sleep. There’s almost an uncertainty in their actions. It naturally makes us as an audience ask questions, and Weir and Clark delight in the torture of making us wait.
It all comes to a head at his bucks party weekend, an event that Louie intends to be a lowkey affair. So lowkey that he’s even invited Irene along – a move that makes little sense initially, but eventually proves a further feather in his gaslighting cap – which, understandably, confuses his best mates, Dylan (Ben Hunter, an absolute scene-stealer), Murph (Alfie Gledhill), and Charlie (Jack Bannister); Charlie has then extended the invite to his fiancé, Grace (Clementine Anderson), as a way to make Irene feel less uncomfortable. The irony of Irene feeling uncomfortable becomes glaringly apparent as the night steams ahead.
Dylan, the self-appointed master of chaos, has every intention of fuelling the party (literally) with the alcoholic and substance abuse that seem to go hand-in-hand with such an event, and he can’t entirely understand why Louie especially has such an aversion to the idea. In fact, Dylan has trouble understanding a lot of what’s taking (and taken) place. When it’s revealed to him that Irene is coming along, he’s particularly disheartened. Then there’s the fact that Louie is sporting a nasty head scar after surviving an apparent accident. The details Weir and Clark tease out start to paint a bigger picture of toxicity across all the relationships at hand; even Charlie and Grace, who appear like a strong enough foundation, and the reveal of their respective virginities are brought into question.
The first day of them all coming together is mostly an affair of unbridled gaiety. Drinks are free poured, there’s a blow-up sex doll on hand for good measure, and, slight paranoia aside, everyone seems to put their issues aside for the sake of celebrating Louie and Irene. But if they’re a couple worth celebrating becomes a valid point of argument as the evening spirals towards a campfire game named, fittingly enough, “Paranoia”. Dylan, who seems to be gunning for Louie at every chance he gets – his dinner speech starts off lovingly enough, before it descends into anecdotes of masked cruelty – delights in the rules of the game, where his coin toss determines whether or not a whispered question between two people is publicly asked or not. Regardless, the two people audibly answer with a name. Louie is uttered consistently. The questions are not.
By this point Birdeater has masterfully put its entire audience on edge. If “Paranoia” wasn’t enough, the reveal of Louie and Irene’s relationship dynamic at dinner is sure to tip us over the edge. What that dynamic is is best left for the audience to uncover in real time, as the scales of power and trust continually tip between Louie and Irene, and the conversations had around such by Dylan, Murph, Charlie, Grace, and the uninvited Sam (Harley Wilson), his presence also bringing about a multitude of questions, organically touch on the differing views we are likely to have as bystanders.
A film that embraces what it is to be truly horrific, Birdeater leans into the brutality of psychological and emotional abuse; we throw around the word “gaslighting” a lot, but Weir and Clark fundamentally showcase what that looks like. Perhaps the scariest aspect of the film – save for a truly frightening drug-and-drink fuelled visit to an open forest land where the boys are “entertained” by a mobile-service stripper – is how much is left unanswered. There are multiple relationships and friendships put to the test due to a hostility towards the truth in some capacity, and even when such a lie is exposed, Weir and Clark’s script refuses to allow resolution.
Visceral and feral, Birdeater blends its topical commentary on separation anxiety and fragile masculinity with an almost hallucinatory mentality. Its intrusive editing and claustrophobic camera shots further highlight Weir and Clark’s stronghold on genre execution, resulting in a truly horrific vision that revels in its uncompromising temperament.
Bachelor parties (or stag parties, as they are known in the United Kingdom or in this case, Australia) are the supposed debaucherous sendoff as one male ventures off on the momentous journey of marriage and says goodbye to the single life for good (hopefully). It’s a self-contained amount of time where the groom’s closest friends will recall the early days and maybe lament about how things will never be the same again. There have been enough depictions of media that show you what is believed to be happening during a night or a weekend (a specific trilogy comes to mind). Could you imagine a groom inviting his soon-to-be bride to one of these? That would be a tad out of the ordinary, wouldn’t it? With Birdeater, co-directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir aren’t tied down to an adherence to tradition. Instead, this weekend in the woods serves as a pressure cooker for a toxic relationship ready to burst.
At first glance, Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley) and Irene (Shabana Azeez) seem to have a typical relationship, as days are chronicled at a particular cadence. Louie works, swims to exercise with Irene at his side, and ventures out for some alone time golfing. But in this mode of repetition, you’ll notice something is off. For starters, Louie tells Irene a different excuse to get away — that’s because Irene has extreme separation anxiety when Louie is not around. As their wedding day grows closer, it’s apparent that Louie cannot have the “boys” weekend without worrying about Irene, so he invites her to come. It seems like a recipe for disaster — I mean, bringing your wife to a gathering where all decorum is thrown out the window might not give one the greatest confidence to walk down the altar.
Clark and Weir, who also co-wrote the film, have something deeper for anybody looking to take the story at face value. Birdeater is not just about two people interlocked in the jaws of what bad romance could be but also about how toxic masculinity can cloak itself through the proverbial “nice guy” aesthetic. Louie’s friends Dylan (Ben Hunter), Charlie (Jack Bannister), Murph (Alfie Gledhill), and Sam (Harley Wilson) meet them in the beautiful, secluded compound. Just so Irene doesn’t feel left out, Charlie’s girlfriend, Grace (Clementine Anderson), comes along for the ride. As an extra element, a man Irene used to travel with named Sam (Harley Wilson) joins everybody as well, and this inclusion is a slow build of tension within Louie. He notices things, but it’s not entirely certain that they aren’t a figment of his imagination.
A perception switch occurs in Birdeater once you get to its primary setting, where you witness how uncomfortable it may be for someone like Irene. She doesn’t know anybody, and the men are slowly devolving into the most primal versions of themselves as the liquor and the drugs start flowing. Louie tries to resist, even as far as chastizing his friends for their actions. But eventually, everybody’s true colors come to the surface. Dylan, the most excitable and energetic person out of the bunch, is determined to make Louie regress into the rather “unkind” person he was before he met Irene. Or has he always been a terrible person at his core? That’s something that Clark and Weir don’t completely give you the answer to — scenarios like dinner table speeches and a campfire jam act like wobbly Jenga pieces ready to fall at the slightest wind. Birdeater is, at first, a clear-cut meditation of how secrets and repressed insecurities will always find a way to reveal themselves. Its second half unveils a foray into surrealism, maybe even considering how even when you think you know someone, there’s always something in the deep crevices of their psyche they haven’t revealed to you.
That’s scarier than any ghost, werewolf, or vampire. It’s seeing these revelations because they are no longer bound or inhibited by a specific circumstance. While this particular group of people all have something to hide from one another, the bigger mystery lies with Louie and Irene. It takes two to tango, and in this deceptive and often uncomfortable depiction of a relationship hamster wheel, you’ll be waiting for someone to stop the ride.
A strained relationship with the truth. That’s the thread that courses its way through the terrific Aussie indie flick, TENNESSINE.
The title comes from the name of a human-made element that has never been observed to occur naturally, and only a handful of atoms of it have ever been created. It is what Arash calls Nazanin, the lover he has flown from Iran to Australia to reunite with, to reignite their relationship, much to the chagrin of his family, most notably his mother.
It may be a case of mother knows best when Arash arrives at Melbourne Airport and Nazanin is not there to pick him up as scheduled. When she finally arrives she’s breezily apologetic as if it’s no biggie and off they set for a romantic reunion in the country.
Always apparently free spirited, Nazanin has become even more self possessed away from the shackles of authoritarian Iran with their shameful moral police policy.
Her embrace of the new country only seems to increase Arash’s sense of displacement, of disappointing his family and the deceit of fidelity to him by Nazanin.
Arash, played by the film’s writer, Osamah Sami, subtly shows the dual experience of having an out of body reaction followed by a deep dive into introspective depression.
Tense with paranoia, suspicion and an erotic charge, TENNESSINE succeeds as a slow burn psychological drama portraying the effects of displacement, belonging and love.
The elusive Nazanin, portrayed by the photo-kinetic Faezeh Alavi, is a force of nature screen presence, a high voltage performance that adds megawatts to the drama.
Directed by Amin Palangi, TENNESSINE is predominantly spoken in Persian, and is reminiscent of the quality cinema emanating from Iran in recent years.
Circumstances beyond the control of characters and the out of control consequences they trigger lead to a concentric dramatic target.
A blurred image of a Wake in Fright poster in an early shot in Birdeater cuts right to the heart of directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir’s feature debut, a hat tip to the style and tone of madness ahead. Like Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 classic thriller, Birdeater utilizes horror and thriller mechanics and tropes to deconstruct Australia’s masculine identity, one at odds with today’s sociopolitical landscape, through a contemporary lens. While it doesn’t push the genre elements far enough, its heady themes, sustained dread, and distinct visual language culminate in a tense psychodrama that poses compelling questions.
The signs that something’s deeply amiss in the relationship between engaged couple Irene (Shabana Azeez) and Louie (Mackenzie Fearnley) come fast and furious from the outset. Codependency issues and controlling behavior bubble just beneath the surface of their seemingly idyllic romance. Before filmmakers Clark, who wrote the script, and Weir can pull back the curtain to reveal more, the assertive Louie persuades meek Irene to accompany him to his bucks weekend party in the woods. There, the soon-to-be-wedded couple are joined by Louie’s volatile pal Dylan (Ben Hunter), sometimes devout Christian friend Charlie (Jack Bannister), Charlie’s fiancé Grace (Clementine Anderson), wildcard pal Murph (Alfie Gledhill), and Irene’s old friend Sam (Harley Wilson). But pre-wedding celebrations quickly run off the rails to an alarming degree when uncomfortable truths about Louie and Irene’s relationship are exposed.
Clark and Weir masterfully keep their audience on edge as they slowly peel back discomforting layers of this motley group of erstwhile partyers. Louie is never depicted as physically abusive or violent, yet there’s an underlying air of menace to him all the same. Fearnley deftly toggles between love bombing and menacing, controlling behaviors that paint a stark picture of abuse, albeit of an emotional and psychological type, made worse by the peculiar social dynamics of this quirky friend group amidst a drug-fueled bachelor weekend. The filmmakers employ horror tactics to instill palpable tension, then heighten it the more Louie’s bad behaviors get ignored or enabled by everyone.
Clark and Weir create an impressive juggling act here as the tension escalates and psychological states deteriorate, all to illustrate the ways in which toxicity can thrive unchecked. In this case, the care and precision in setting up the friendships and histories here suggest class plays a pivotal role in allowing bad behavior to run amok. The less sober the group becomes, the more intense things grow, exposing buried secrets, trauma, and infighting. Ben Anderson’s editing serves the film well in tone and visual flair. A pivotal reveal gets peppered with rapid cuts of cartoon imagery that drives home the darkly comedic, dangerous, and unhinged nature of the ill-fated Buck party.
The filmmakers take Birdeater right up to the line of snowballing into full-blown horror, as drunken revelry threatens to explode into surrealism, but use restraint to prevent the horror techniques from distracting from the insidious rot at the center of Louie and Irene’s codependency. More impressively, that restraint extends to Birdeaters’ themes of abuse and masculine identity in Australia. For such lofty questions asked, Clark and Weir refuse to offer any tidy answers or conclusions. The film’s breathless closing moments pack an emotional wallop that leaves you grappling with feelings of trepidation, hope, and uncertainty.
Birdeater is an audacious reckoning with identity told through a relatable scenario gone very wrong. Borrowing a page from Wake in Fright, Clark and Weir’s feature debut examines heady concepts through confident filmmaking and subversion of tropes through horror techniques. The pair take care in their approach to tackling delicate topics like abusive relationships and wisely opt to expose that abuse doesn’t have to be physical to be bone-chillingly destructive. That restraint makes for a compelling, nail-biting watch, even if it never wholly veers into horror.
Sydney-based filmmaker Ulysses Oliver has three feature films screening at this year’s Sydney Film Festival – Birdeater and Tennessine which he co-produced, and Love Road, a tense drama that marks the independent filmmaker’s feature film debut as director.
To have one film officially selected for the Sydney Film Festival is a massive achievement in itself. To have four films selected is testament to the quality of Ulysses work behind the camera.
Love Road follows Jaz (Shalane Connors), as she flees a fractured relationship with Daniel (Ishak Issa) traversing a road full of memories of love and loss, as she tries to find the strength to face hard truths.
Ulysses Oliver has over twenty years experience in the development of media productions. He is a founding director of Breathless Films, a production company that has produced five features to date: Lonesome, The Longest Weekend , Tennessine, Love Road and Birdeate.
As you will discover in this interview, Love Road is Ulysses’ most personal film yet.
Shalane Connors in Love Road.
“A lot of what happens within this on-screen relationship comes from a personal place that I really wanted to explore within the three act structure of a feature film.”
Interview by Matthew Eeles
Do you have a direct line to the Sydney Film Festival programming team? How does one have three films selected for one of Australia’s biggest film festival?
[Laughs]. I don’t know. We are based here in Sydney. We’ve been fortunate enough to be selected. We feel like the quality of our films really stands up in terms of what we were able to achieve on very little resources. I suppose that the independent spirit of the festival is very much in line with what we’ve been doing to foster these types of films. We hope that as we continue to grow that we’re building to bigger and better things.
What are the origins of your production company, Breathless Films?
[Co-founder] Ben Ferris and I got together over a coffee one day. I was actually in the middle of preparing to shoot Love Road at the time. Ben used to run Sydney Film School which I’m an alumni of. We talked about trying to make a series of films for very small amounts of money under fifty thousand dollars. We managed to raise funds through a private investor who would come on board to get things going. We spoke to a hundred or so filmmakers and did a big six month curation process. Love Road was a forerunner to prove that we could make a feature film for under fifty thousand dollars. These other four films were also part of that creation process.
Did you feel like Australian was lacking a certain type of film that you were keen to make?
We felt that by coming up with a model that sits outside of the studio system, and the agency system, that would lead to opportunities to make a different type story that wouldn’t otherwise be made through those traditional models.
As a producer, do you actively seek out Australian films, and watch what’s being made locally to keep your finger on the creative pulse of this country?
Yes, definitely. I mean, at the moment it’s been a very intensive couple of years, so I think we were more seeking out what’s being made locally at that emerging or micro budget level. We were constantly reviewing that space and taking meetings and looking at opportunities. There’s rarely a day that doesn’t go past where we’ve not been contacted by filmmakers seeking an opportunity to have their low budget films made.
Fifty thousand dollars is a great starting point for someone wanting to make an independent film. A lot of filmmakers would feel as though it’s impossible to get a film made with such a small amount of cash.
Well, we start with that amount as a baseline. The budgets on some films have grown once a production schedule and the cast and crew are locked in. As long as it’s the right story, with two main character over a short period, with a crew of four or five people, you should be able to accomplish something. That’s the type of film that you need to be thinking of when you’re formulating your story. There are compromises to be had. You need to write for locations you can easily access, and you have to write for actors who you know would come on a project of this scale. There’s no real secret to it as such. It is a bit of a process in terms of what’s achievable, but it is achievable.
You’re best known as a producer on films like Lonesome, The Longest Weekend and two Sydney Film Festival films, Tennessine and Birdeater. What stands out for you as something that will make a good film?
Well, I very much enjoy character based stories, so there needs to be an authenticity to the story and then a connection through performance to what’s been written. There needs to be an understanding of the fundamentals of story in terms of what’s achievable within a three act structure. I definitely prefer film over TV for that reason. With film, you’re understanding these beats that go into making up a story. And I think Love Road, in a way, sticks to those structures even though these two characters are existing in three parallel timelines. The other question that needs to be considered is will your story work for an audience? Will it play at festivals? Will it sell into a marketplace? And I think with Breathless Film’s first slate of films, maybe we lent towards what our taste was rather than what audiences might have wanted. Relationship dramas, and exploring a whole lot of different sub-genres within that space. As we move forward we are thinking of maybe leaning into more genres films, comedies, horrors and moving into that market place. But yeah, five outta five Sydney Film Festival official selections over the years isn’t bad. [Laughs].
Shalane Connors and Ishak Issa in Love Road.
Why was now the right time to make your feature film debut as a director.
Having made some short films as a director, and quite a lot of content as a producer, I knew that what ever I was going to make as a director had to be achievable. I specifically had to write something that I knew would work. I was ready for that challenge as a producer on Love Road, and it just so happened that I was also the writer of the film too. Because I knew the script and the story would work, and that the film would be achievable, I knew then that I could also direct it. Approaching this film creatively, both my parents had passed away which gave me a drive to succeed with this film. Also, a lot of the things that happen within this on-screen relationship between the lead characters, Jaz and Daniel, comes from a personal place that I really wanted to explore within the three act structure of a feature film.
Would you say that moving into directing felt like a natural progression for you as a filmmaker?
Yeah. I tend to take on way more than what I should whenever I’m working on any film. [Laughs]. I embrace and thrive on chaos. That may be a criticism that some people have of me, but it’s also one of my best strengths in that I really do rise to any challenge and occasion that’s put in front of me. Directing was just another step to add to my duties that I have on set. [Laughs]. I’ve learnt a lot from this experience in terms of not taking on too much, and learning how to delegate and trust other creatives around me while I focused on just directing. I learnt a lot about what to control and what not to control. Delegating is not something that comes natural to me, so directing my first feature film has taught me a lot about letting go. [Laughs].
Was it difficult to seperate your directing and producing duties on Love Road?
It was difficult. One hundred percent it was. [Laughs]. Across our entire slate of films I’ve been really involved in all facets of each film we’ve made from workshopping scripts, to casting, and then producing the film. There are so many amazing facets of filmmaking when you’re working in such a collaborative space. There are a thousand jobs on every film. It’s an extremely rewarding and amazing process. On Love Road, I was really interested in understanding all 1001 jobs. [Laughs]. I wanted to use the experience of making Love Road to understand every facet of filmmaking, including directing, so I can take that knowledge into the next slate of films we’re looking to produce.
I mentioned those other films that you’ve produced. Were you observing those directors during that time, and learning from them?
Yes, yes, yes. One hundred percent. I’ve worked with some amazing directors who I’ve learnt a great deal from. All of the filmmakers I’ve worked with have some truly amazing strengths that I’ve learnt so much from. From Amin Palangi on Tennessine, Craig Boreham on Lonesome, Molly Haddon on The Longest Weekend and Jack Clark and Jim Weir on Birdeater, they’ve taught me so much. For example, Craig was amazing at just knowing exactly what he wanted and not shooting any more than what he needed to shoot rather than trying to cover all the bases coverage wise. That was a huge learning experience for me. Something else I learnt on a bunch of these films is just putting more time into developing the script and the story and really owning it. You need to be very specific about cause and effect, and what’s needed and what’s not needed. I worked on Love Road for so long because it’s non-linear. There were a thousands different ways I could have edited this story together.
Did you write Love Road as a non-linear story, or did that come during the edit?
I did write the story in a non-linear way. There are three parallel stories and everything starts to come together in the middle of the story.
You’re exploring some heavy themes here through this toxic relationship. What are the origins of this story? You mentioned that some of it might be quite personal for you.
I have to say that pretty much every little story element within this film I’ve written is based on my own personal experiences. To seperate myself from this story, and my really personal experiences, I focused the story more on the female protagonist, Jaz. I removed myself from this character by making her female. During the filming of Love Road, I did find out about my father passing away and then my mother got sick and passed away. So all of that is quite personal. Also, dealing with past relationships in terms of betrayals on both sides. Also, the little squabbles between this couple in the car, I think every couple has been in that situation arguing over directions.
I don’t think it’s possible to go on a road trip with anyone without arguing about something.
Exactly right. [Laughs]. I would also like to say that this film is also inspired by the films of Richard Linklater where you just have two characters having conversations, exploring particular themes. Love Road was always designed in that way where I just wanted to let these scenes play out organically. It’s dialogue heavy.
Shalane Connors and Ishak Issa in Love Road.
Was it a challenge for you to write from a female perspective?
I don’t think so. I think we all have strong female and male sides to us. I was raised by a single mother. I have a wife and two young girls. I’m surrounded by a family of girls and I feel like I’m in touch with my feminine side. I think that maybe we get too hung up on specifically writing for females and for writing for male characters. This story isn’t told specifically from Jaz’s perspective, although the edit did kind of go a little bit in that direction. As much as Daniel acts as an antagonist in various moments, he also has some empathetic moments. Jaz does do some equally terrible things to Daniel at times, maybe worse. Hopefully people see the balance in this story.
New South Wales has the highest rate of domestic violence in Australia. Was this story a response to those statistics?
Domestic Violence is all too commonplace in New South Wales and the statistics prove that. But I don’t think I set out to write something in response to those figures. The figures are way too high everywhere. Without making any kind of commentary on those statistics directly. I think I really wanted to get the point across that domestic violence has a huge impact on all aspects of society.
Is it easy to disconnect from a story like this when you’re not writing it or filming it?
It was for me, but that was only because I spent so much time on this film. Also, my mum passed away after I finished production so I did find it very hard to finish the film on that regard rather than the actual subject matter within the film. That was quite difficult. I do know that some of the cast in the film found the subject matter quite challenging and quite hard to watch.
As well as being your debut feature film as director, Love Road also marks debut lead performances for Shalane Conners and Ishak Issa. Can you tell us about casting these two?
I first met Shalene when I was at Sydney Film School many years ago. I think she auditioned for my thesis film. We’ve worked on a few little things together. I’ve always kept her in mind for a feature film role. Ishak came in a bit later during the audition process. I probably had an older character in mind, but Ishak came along and blew us away in the audition. I felt like he added a really interesting dynamic to this character, and to the film itself. I think Ishak has a French and Egyptian background so it was interesting to incorporate a character that comes from a different background. He was a pleasure to work with.
Did I spot Shalane briefly in Tennessine?
You did. You did. Well spotted. It’s very brief. At one point we were learning towards the idea of having these sliding door moments in each film where we see one of the other characters from the other film just pop in. It would have been great to have that little link between Tennesseeand Love Road.
A Breathless Films multiverse.
Yes, yes. [Laughs]. I really want to see more of that in Australian films. It didn’t quite happen here. It was actually Osamah Sami who suggested we do that. If we had our time again we may have leant more into that. It’s quite fun.
Now that you’ve made your first feature film, what was the biggest lesson you learnt that you’ll take into your next directing project?
Spend more time in pre-production and spend more time working with the actors. It’s tough to do when you’re working on limited time. It’s all about finding that right balance. I’d love to have more time on pre-production and post-production.
U.K. sales and distribution outfit Blue Finch Films has boarded worldwide rights, excluding Australia and New Zealand, to thriller “Birdeater.”
The debut feature from filmmaking duo Jack Clark and Jim Weir follows a bride-to-be who is invited to join her own fiancé’s bachelor party on a remote property in the Australian outback. But as the festivities spiral into beer-soaked chaos, uncomfortable details about their relationship are exposed, and the celebration soon becomes a feral nightmare.
Blue Finch describes the film as “an unapologetic look at how Australia’s iconic masculine identity has become incompatible with contemporary gender politics.” The film stars Shabana Azeez (“Run Rabbit Run”) and Mackenzie Fearnley (“Operation Buffalo”) as the soon-to-be-wedded couple. Written by Clark, the film is produced by Stephanie Troost and Ulysses Oliver of Breathless Films. The Australian and New Zealand rights are with Umbrella Entertainment.
The film screened at the Melbourne International Film Festival and the Sydney Film Festival, where it won the audience award for Australian narrative feature. It will have its international premiere at SXSW in the Visions strand.
The directors met while studying at the Australian Film Television and Radio School and founded independent production company Fax Machine after graduating. Clark and Weir are previous nominees of BBFF’s Young Australian Filmmaker of the Year Award for their shorts “Threshold” and “Julia” respectively.
Clark and Weir said: “We’re still pinching ourselves. South By has been our holy grail festival for so many years and to actually have a film screening there is surreal. ‘Birdeater’ was designed to be experienced in a packed cinema and we can’t wait to see how SXSW audiences react to it.”
Mike Chapman of Blue Finch Films added: “’Birdeater’ is one of the most visually arresting and daring debut features we have seen in recent years. Blue Finch focuses on championing talent and we can’t be more excited to be bringing this gem to a wider audience.”
Ari Harrison of Umbrella Entertainment said: “‘Birdeater’ is an impressive feature debut that matches the capabilities, tension and energy of its Australian New Wave predecessors such as ‘Wake In Fright’ and ‘Walkabout.’ After a very successful festival release Down Under we are thrilled for its international premiere to be showcased at SXSW Austin in superb company.”
Jack Clark and Jim Weir’s Birdeater and Matthew Bate’s The Defenders have proven popular at this year’s Sydney Film Festival (SFF), taking out the audience awards for Best Australian Narrative Feature and Best Australian Documentary, respectively.
Of the overseas titles, Anatomy of a Fall by French director Justine Triet was named Best International Feature, while Madeleine Gavin’s Beyond Utopia won Best International Documentary.
Tallied from more than 18,000 votes, this year’s event marked the first time both local and international winners were announced.
Indie drama Birdeater follows a soon-to-be-married couple that invites their closest friends to an isolated country property for a night of pre-wedding shenanigans, only for the evening to take a dark turn when alarming details of their relationship are exposed. Produced by Ulysses Oliver and Stephanie Troost, it was one of three titles from Breathless Films in the festival line-up alongside Amin Palangi’s Tennessine and Oliver’s Love Road.
Breathless co-founder and executive producer Ben Ferris told IF it was thrilling to have the “truly independent” film regarded so highly.
“This is a win not only for us at Breathless and the Birdeater team but for the whole independent sector and what we might be able to achieve in the absence of more traditional funding models,” he said.
“We are so very grateful to Nashen, Jenny, and the SFF team for believing in the film.”
In The Defenders, Bate tells the story of how former Australian football captain Craig Foster and a ragtag team of social media warriors challenged two monarchies, a military junta and the sporting body FIFA, to free footballer Hakeem al-Araibi from prison. The documentary will be released on Prime Video this Friday.
There was a similar tone in the corresponding international winners, with Sandra Hüller starring as an author accused of her husband’s murder in tense drama Anatomy of a Fall, while Beyond Utopia tracks a family’s dramatic journey from North Korea to freedom.
SFF Director Nashen Moodley paid tribute to the festival’s audience for their choices.
“Birdeater was a fantastic indie production by the team at Breathless Films who had three films premiere at the festival,” he said.
“A homegrown psychological thriller that painted a darkly comic portrait of young Aussie men, Birdeater was a real hit with audiences.
“The Defenders is a headline-grabbing story of former Socceroos Captain Craig Foster as he fights to rescue the life of fellow player Hakeem al-Araibi. This documentary took us behind the media headlines, diving deep into the fight to bring Hakeem home to Australia.
“Anatomy of a Fall is a searingly intelligent film that lingers on the mind long after the closing credits roll so it’s no surprise festival audiences awarded it Best International Narrative Feature. And director Madeleine Gavin’s Beyond Utopia is a gripping documentary that follows North Korean defectors as they make a hazardous journey into China; a totally unforgettable film worthy of the prize.”
SFF has added additional screenings of Anatomy of a Fall and Beyond Utopia as a part of its Back by Popular Demand.
The GIO Audience Award winners are as follows:
Australian Feature: • Winner: Birdeater • Runner Up: The Big Dog Australian Documentary: • Winner: The Defenders • Runner Up: The Last Daughter International Feature: • Winner: Anatomy of a Fall • Runner Up: Perfect Days International Documentary: • Winner: Beyond Utopia • Runner Up: Little Richard: I Am Everything
Love Road is Ulysses Oliver’s directorial debut. It’s also one of five films that have screened at the Sydney Film Festival in 2022 and 2023 that hail from production company Breathless Films. In 2022, Breathless Films screened Lonesome and The Longest Weekend at the festival, with Tennessine, Biredeater, and Love Road screening at the 2023 run.
Love Road is a non-linear relationship drama that follows Jaz (Shalane Connors) as her relationship with Daniel (Ishak Issa) splits. As that fracture takes place, so does our engagement with their story, with the narrative jumping between timelines to give viewers the sense of how the past informs the present. While Jaz evades Daniel’s presence, she also deals with a more heartbreaking issue: the loss of her mother (Aileen Beale).
In the below interview, recorded ahead of the opening of the festival, Ulysses talks about the inspiration behind Love Road before going in depth into the vision and community focus that comes from Breathless Films.
Love Roadscreens at the Sydney Film Festival on June 8 and 9; Birdeaterscreens on June 11, 14, and 18; and Tennessinescreens on June 13 and 16.
Where did the concept for Love Road come from?
Ulysses Oliver: I’m a producer, as well as a director and a writer, and I came at it from the angle of, “Okay, I happened to have a window of opportunity in my life, what is achievable [in that time] and maybe I can dedicate a small amount of funds to what’s achievable within that kind of scope.”
Married with that was that I was going through similar issues to Jaz in terms of [losing] a parent. My father had passed away and then my mother was sick as well, so it was pretty rough stuff to process. Then I had these little segments or bits of relationships that were going around in my head, some of which I’ve written down. I ended up [with] a series of twelve essays on different themes of a cycle of love that I’ve been working with over a number of years.
I’m a big fan of Wim Wenders, King of the Road, that kind of approach to filmmaking where you take a location and kind of transpose your idea and your story on top of it. It was motivated from doing the road trip that these two characters go on and finding locations along the way, and then retrofitting these ideas about love and loss and the cycle of a relationship on top of that. The nonlinear structured relationship felt like a good marriage for something a bit like Guy Pearce’s character in Memento, where you go backwards in [the] edit to get into the mindset of a character. In this case, we’re nonlinear jumping between the three different time periods to capture that space of how we process memories. Particularly when we’re trying to figure stuff in our scattered mindset. Some of the beginnings of writing the story was in that mindset as well and processing some things that, for better or for worse, have happened in relationships.
As you’re talking about that scattered mindset, I’m reminded of the feeling when you’re in a place, and something contextual sparks a memory of something that feels similar to that location. There’s a cut where Jaz is in her car, we see her sitting there, and then we cut and see in the passenger seat her mother’s urn. You can be walking and experiencing your day, and then suddenly, a memory of something hits you in a very unexpected way. I felt that that was the case for these characters where this relationship is echoed through time, and that echo hits them in unexpected ways. That’s the way we experience day to day life where the relationships that we may have had with people, whether it be fleeting or long and powerful, they carry through our lives in fascinating ways. That’s what I felt from the characters, and that’s where we experience via the road trip.
UO: Ithink you’re right. By leaving out all the bits in the relationship that happened between these three timelines on this road trip, I [was] trying to capture the idea that sometimes it’s only when you revisit these places, or when you’re stuck in a car together, and you’re forced to have these moments of reflection or moments of togetherness, [they] always tend to [become] a cathartic, make or break relationship moment. It’s fun to also play with the audience a little bit [about whether you] can fill in the gaps and use your imagination in terms of piecing it together. What’s happened between those moments is interesting as well in your imagination.
There’s a few spots like that [throughout the film]; her with the urn, her driving and then she looks at a cafe and then we go back in time, and when she gets to the house, we cut back and look at that. It was very much written as I was going down the road trip, “Okay, what’s happening? What can be motivated at each of these places? What happens at the same place, but at different times?
With that in mind, how did you shoot it? A linear perspective would kind of make sense but in the same hand, you’re on that location, so you’ve got to monopolise your time there.
UO: It was written in a nonlinear fashion. As much as it jumps around in timelines, there’s a three-act structure and a trajectory along the road. We did retrofit the schedule. We did the middle timeline first, because we needed Ishak to grow a beard. Then we did the young love second, and the final timeline third just so there was a bit of an emotional arc for the actors. It was all done over two weeks with four-day chunks, we did four [days], then four and then four. We weren’t driving in a linear direction the whole time. We looped back and forth, over multiple takes and multiple days. It was kind of doing that road trip four times. And then we got into the edit room and jumbled it all up again in a different order than what we had originally envisaged.
Did that surprise you in the edit?
UO: Oh definitely. I think that’s always the case. In a nonlinear film, you do have an infinite number of possibilities in terms of how to piece it together, for better or for worse. This film was shot three years ago, so that’s how long it took me to work out the puzzle pieces to put it back together. When we did an initial rough-cut, editing to the script, it came in as a two-and-a-half-hour film. Cutting it down to [the] 86-minute runtime was a challenge. Being out on the road, everything was done in two takes. Some were better than others, so there were all those challenges in the edit that you have to work around. At some point you have to go ‘it is what it is,’ and put it out into the world.
I know as a writer that there are things that I write that other people won’t see. And as a filmmaker, there are things that you will film that audiences won’t see at all. But it’s that understanding of knowing when it’s time to relinquish control and letting it out into the wild. Having a film festival like Sydney Film Festival is a great deadline creator, a push to say, “I have to have it complete by this stage.”
With that in mind, we’ll shift to talking about the Sydney Film Festival and your relationship with the festival. Last year you screen Lonesome and The Longest Weekend, and this year you have Tennessine, Love Road, and Birdeater. Filmmakers would be excited to get one film into Sydney Film Festival, but in your capacity as a producer and as a director, you’ve had five films in two years. How do you feel about that?
UO: We’re very proud. We submit the films like anybody else. Obviously, it says a bit about what we’ve managed to achieve. It’s not just Breathless, ever film has its own village of people that have come together to make it work. The director of each film brings their own posse to work with us, and none of the films would have made if that wasn’t the case. We’re partnering up, if you like, with these different vehicles. I think maybe that’s a strength of ours in that we don’t claim full control over any of these films, we’re more here to facilitate getting those films made.
The flip side though, is that it’s very hard to get a feature film made. You don’t make that many. There’s obviously a place for the Screen Australia way of making films, but we’ve kind of been programmed in Australia to think that that’s the only way to make a film. And I suspect, more and more people are going to catch up to our way of thinking. We’ve seen that we you can make it in other ways. Maybe we’re a little bit of a forerunner of hopefully creating more of a truly independent, ‘French New Wave-style’ of how to make films.
On the Breathless Films website, it says, “We believe the best art comes from limitation and necessity.” Those are strong words that say a lot about the kinds of films that you’re creating. Films like Lonesome and The Longest Weekend, these aren’t traditional films that the funding agencies would usually support. These are queer stories, and for want of a better term, they’re still considered fringe cinema. Yet, there is an appetite for these stories. Can you talk about presenting these stories to audiences and how that feeds into that limitation and necessity mindset that is behind breathless films?
UO: I think you said yourself, they are the type of films that a funding body would not necessarily take a risk on. They’re not the kind of films that have a guaranteed return at the box office. We end up leaning on stories that are going to work. You’re not competing against those bigger vehicles; you need to make stories where it doesn’t matter that you don’t have [an A-list name]. We’ve got certain [actors] that show up in some of our films that have a bit of kudos to them, and that certainly helps, but it’s not necessarily reliant on that. We are going through more stories that wouldn’t otherwise be told, but also stories that it doesn’t matter that you don’t have a $5, $10, $20 million budget [for]. It’s about the internal characterisation, maybe in a subtle way, looking at a political view, or it’s LGBT stories with Lonesome, or gritty realism and telling authentic stories or characters that don’t fit into the kind of stereotypical form that we like to put things in in Australia.
I think the great struggle is that we do need to financially justify [when] we’re making these films. It’s less of a hole to dig, but we’re digging it. We are the ones that are burning a hole in the back pocket. We need to believe that there is a market out there. Internationally, as much as there is probably less money going around [for] theatrical [releases] for independent cinema, there is a huge market now with streamers for indie films. It’s not huge financially, but there’s a lot of sales agents and distributors out there that that will give you a small amount of money that is enough to hopefully keep the cycle of films going. [We’re] working on what we put in, rather than what we can get out and rather than thinking of it as, “How do we justify this to Screen Australia to give us a million dollars?”
That’s the thing, isn’t it? Each time, you go to ask for funding, you have to justify your existence. We exist. We tell great stories. Therefore, surely, it’s self-evident. But that is the difficulty of funding models and having to write proposals. As much as you are creative people, you’ve also got to have that business mindset, which can be so difficult. I take my hat off to filmmakers like yourself who have to balance so many different things just to get films made.
Within Breathless Films, there is an emerging community of creatives. You use the same talent across films. With Love Road, you’ve got Shalane Connors, who is also in Tennessine. You’re using directors, writers, producers, like yourself, across different projects. What does it mean to be able to build up that kind of community within Breathless Films?
UO: Aileen Beale, who is in Love Road, played the voice of the mother in Lonesome. At one point, we were toying with the idea of having these little subtle links between all the films, in a Sliding Doors kind of a way. Certainly, across the crew, there’s a real community building on that side of things. You do you keep going back to the same crew in a lot of cases. I’m fortunate enough that my son, Julian Oliver, who’s in his mid-20s now, he did a music engineering degree, so he’s worked across all five films, doing both sound recording and sound design, and some music as well on Love Road and Birdeater.
The camera crews, production design, the art department and makeup are all shared across [most] films. I guess we consider these first five films to be our first slate, we’re now we’re now working on a second slate of films where we’re looking at working with a bunch of the same creative writers and directors. So look out for that.
Alongside building that community, there is also a real strong sense of coming out of the gates with a creative confidence. “These are the stories that we want to tell. We’re not afraid to tell them in our way that. We’re going to push how we want our narratives to go forward and how we want to see those kinds of stories being told.” I really appreciate it that about Breathless Films in the sense that it doesn’t pander to the expectations of what people might expect. You must be proud.
UO: I am proud, although, that occurs to me that maybe that’s a symptom of a relatively short turnaround of from seeding an idea to final product. The flipside of that is sometimes I wish there was more work done in development, and that we had more time to shoot, and we had more time to work in the post production, or that we had a bit more resources or whatever it might be, but then would the films get made if we were more precious about these things? Probably not.
What’s the expression? Opportunity meeting good luck or limitations breed creativity? I think it has been that, and I think that that’s what comes through as a result. I don’t know about you, but my creative passion only goes so far to where I can really deep dive into something. I feel like [there’s] a two-year window where that’s sustainable, but we’re asking filmmakers to have that over five to ten years with more conventional pathways. You then spend five years going through revision after the revision and trying to pain yourself to make everybody happy. I think you end up with a different type of film.
You can spend so long polishing a rock before it becomes just a grain of sand. It becomes so different from what it was to begin with. Sometimes that’s really good, and then other times, that really impacts the creative drive. As you’re saying, you have a certain period of time where that creative spark is sitting there, and you’ve got to really monopolise on it otherwise you could become bored.
UO: And in this short timespan, disposable modern world we live in, I think that’s more and more the case.
I’m curious if, after our global COVID experience, that reminder of the fragility of life and how fleeting life can be if that has played into how you create things?
UO: I think it definitely did. Now with the second slate it’s easier because we’ve got all these runs on the board, so people believe when we say we’re going to do something that we can do it. All four of those other films were shot in that gap between the different lockdowns. People [were] itching to get out there and create something. They were willing to take risks. That was quite fortuitous. Hopefully that then shows now off the back end of COVID, [we can] still we continue to have that bit of energy.
I can see workplaces and offices are now starting to force people to go back into the office full time, so we are going a bit more back to the old way of doing things. Although hopefully that will change in terms of thinking more outside of the box. At the same time, at Breathless, we don’t want to lose that very pragmatic, independent ‘limitation breeds creativity’ side of things, but we also want to find ways to evolve and be bigger.
At the moment, we’re actually trying to find the right balance of not wanting to lose that while also upscaling to a degree. Lonesome did okay, and had a theatrical release, but it’s not a Blair Witch Project [level of success.] We’re not putting in X and getting that times 100. That’d be amazing to actually make this whole thing truly work. Right now, it’s still a lot of doing a lot for very little but, we’re still up for the challenge.
With that in mind, how do you decide on what kind of projects that will get off the ground? Do you do market research? Do you say, “Thrillers are really popular right now, will they still be popular in two years’ time when we get it off the ground?”
UO: I think the first slate was more our taste and what was pragmatically feasible. While the second slate has been a lot more research [based]. We brought in Paul Struthers as part of our team who has a background in marketing and the film festival circuit and so we’ve learned a lot from him leading that charge. We’re spending a lot more time trying to go to markets, either by proxy or directly. We had the producer of Birdeater, Stephanie Troost, at Cannes recently making lots of meetings.
We probably will look at doing a horror film and leaning in a little bit more on genre or leaning in a little bit more on films that have a topical flavour that would make it more sellable in the market. If you compare Lonesome to Love Road, I’m very proud of it, but is there a really big marketplace for a nonlinear heterosexual relationship drama? We’ll see.
We’re looking at working with some bigger name directors and cast. Those kinds of things do help. It’s almost a shame but we probably won’t be making five films in two years [again.] It’s tough. I think maybe a film every six months is still pretty good going.
