HERE OUT WEST
****
Directors: Fadia Abboud, Lucy Gaffy, Julie Kalceff, Ana Kokkinos and Leah Purcell.
Screenwriters: Nisrine Amine, Bina Bhattacharya, Matias Bolla, Claire Cao, Arka Das, Dee Dogan, Vonne Patiag and Tien Tran.
Principal cast:
Genevieve Lemon
Leah Vandenberg
Arka Das
Rahel Romahn
Christine Milo
Jing Xuan Chan
Country: Australia
Classification: M
Runtime: 101 mins.
Australian release date: 3 February 2022.
At last, a film that shows a more accurate depiction of life in Australia in the 21st century, rather than the usual white bread version we see (admittedly, there have been some very good earlier attempts but they always struggle to be widely screened). Selected to open the 2021 Sydney Film Festival, Here Out West is an excellent portrayal of multiculturalism in western Sydney, told in eight chapters by eight emerging writers: Nisrine Amine, Bina Bhattacharya, Matias Bolla, Claire Cao, Arka Das, Dee Dogan, Vonne Patiag and Tien Tran, and directed by five experienced female directors: Fadia Abboud, Lucy Gaffy, Julie Kalceff, Ana Kokkinos and Leah Purcell. Indeed, this is a largely female-driven project because the three producers are also women: Emerald Productions’ Sheila Jayadev, Annabel Davis of Co-Curious and Bree-Anne Sykes.
When a baby is taken from a western Sydney hospital by the child’s grandmother (Genevieve Lemon) on the spur-of-the-moment, it sets off a chain of events that involves the lives of a number of disparate people from a wide range of ethnicities. Their stories touch on different themes but all can be grouped together under the umbrella of the importance of family, regardless of one’s cultural background. Each chapter reveals the complexities of the characters’ lives and these are exposed as connections are made over the course of a single day and night. Brothers fight and bicker, cousins argue, a mother and daughter clash, a woman tries to comfort her dying father, a newly arrived married couple grapple with life in their strange, new land, an exhausted nurse telephones her husband and child back in her home country, and so on. The producers explain that, “Each writer explores the complexity of the parent-child relationship and in particular the notions of belonging and home in relation to family. But far from being a familiar migrant story, the stories in Here Out West have a different flavour – they reflect the next generation of stories about the migrant experience, the stories of the children of migrants, a generation who are demanding to be seen and heard on their own terms.”
Filmed in Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, English, Kurdish, Spanish, Tagalog, Turkish and Vietnamese, Here Out West is a ground-breaking production that deserves to be seen widely. It will, in fact, air on ABC Television eventually but see it on the big screen if you can. The performances are very good, some from familiar faces like Lemon, Anita Hegh, Rahel Romahn and Leah Vandenberg, and some from first-time or beginning actors. Despite the differing writers and directors, its mise-en-scène is seamless because it has the same DoP (Tania Lambert, who’s done a terrific job), production designer, costume designer, editor, composer and sound designer, thus creating a cohesive look-and-feel to the entire movie. It was a bold move to try and bring all the various elements of Here Out West together but the filmmakers have pulled it off. They’ve successfully shown that the ‘west’ is no longer ‘way out’ – it’s here and it’s us.
Screenwriters: Nisrine Amine, Bina Bhattacharya, Matias Bolla, Claire Cao, Arka Das, Dee Dogan, Vonne Patiag and Tien Tran.
Principal cast:
Genevieve Lemon
Leah Vandenberg
Arka Das
Rahel Romahn
Christine Milo
Jing Xuan Chan
Country: Australia
Classification: M
Runtime: 101 mins.
Australian release date: 3 February 2022.
At last, a film that shows a more accurate depiction of life in Australia in the 21st century, rather than the usual white bread version we see (admittedly, there have been some very good earlier attempts but they always struggle to be widely screened). Selected to open the 2021 Sydney Film Festival, Here Out West is an excellent portrayal of multiculturalism in western Sydney, told in eight chapters by eight emerging writers: Nisrine Amine, Bina Bhattacharya, Matias Bolla, Claire Cao, Arka Das, Dee Dogan, Vonne Patiag and Tien Tran, and directed by five experienced female directors: Fadia Abboud, Lucy Gaffy, Julie Kalceff, Ana Kokkinos and Leah Purcell. Indeed, this is a largely female-driven project because the three producers are also women: Emerald Productions’ Sheila Jayadev, Annabel Davis of Co-Curious and Bree-Anne Sykes.
When a baby is taken from a western Sydney hospital by the child’s grandmother (Genevieve Lemon) on the spur-of-the-moment, it sets off a chain of events that involves the lives of a number of disparate people from a wide range of ethnicities. Their stories touch on different themes but all can be grouped together under the umbrella of the importance of family, regardless of one’s cultural background. Each chapter reveals the complexities of the characters’ lives and these are exposed as connections are made over the course of a single day and night. Brothers fight and bicker, cousins argue, a mother and daughter clash, a woman tries to comfort her dying father, a newly arrived married couple grapple with life in their strange, new land, an exhausted nurse telephones her husband and child back in her home country, and so on. The producers explain that, “Each writer explores the complexity of the parent-child relationship and in particular the notions of belonging and home in relation to family. But far from being a familiar migrant story, the stories in Here Out West have a different flavour – they reflect the next generation of stories about the migrant experience, the stories of the children of migrants, a generation who are demanding to be seen and heard on their own terms.”
Filmed in Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, English, Kurdish, Spanish, Tagalog, Turkish and Vietnamese, Here Out West is a ground-breaking production that deserves to be seen widely. It will, in fact, air on ABC Television eventually but see it on the big screen if you can. The performances are very good, some from familiar faces like Lemon, Anita Hegh, Rahel Romahn and Leah Vandenberg, and some from first-time or beginning actors. Despite the differing writers and directors, its mise-en-scène is seamless because it has the same DoP (Tania Lambert, who’s done a terrific job), production designer, costume designer, editor, composer and sound designer, thus creating a cohesive look-and-feel to the entire movie. It was a bold move to try and bring all the various elements of Here Out West together but the filmmakers have pulled it off. They’ve successfully shown that the ‘west’ is no longer ‘way out’ – it’s here and it’s us.