Girl Asleep (2015)
Fifteen is going to turn a corner. It has to.
The world is closing in on Greta Driscoll. On the cusp of turning fifteen she can’t bear to leave her childhood, it contains all the things that give her comfort in this incomprehensible new world. She floats in a bubble of loserdom with her only friend Elliott, until her parents throw her a surprise 15th birthday party and she’s flung into a parallel place; a world that’s weirdly erotic, a little bit violent and thoroughly ludicrous – only there can she find herself.
Based on the critically acclaimed production by Windmill Theatre, GIRL ASLEEP is a journey into the absurd,s cary and beautiful heart of the teenage mind.
Girl Asleep premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in 2015, when it won the Audience Award. It premiered internationally as the Opening Film of the Generation 14Plus section of the Berlin Film Festival. It went on to win Best Film at the Seattle Film Festival, the Critics’ Award at the Melbourne International Film Festival and the prestigious CinefestOz Award. It was nominated for 5 AACTA Awards including Best Film and Best Director.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfpcbbv9V5g
A funny and imaginative portrait of growing pains.
The Hollywood Reporter
An exuberant example of imaginative filmmaking that takes its cues from imagination and talent… a strange, savvy, big-hearted teen adventure that feels perfectly pitched to its target audience as well as those of all ages in search of something unquestionably unique.
Variety
The Turning
The Turning is an anthology film based on a collection of short stories by Tim Winton that explores the impact of past on present, how the seemingly random incidents that change and shape us can never be escaped or let go of. All of the stories are bound together by recurring themes; the passing of time, regret, addiction and obsession.
Soft Tread’s contribution is Reunion, a tale about the awkward relationship between Vic’s wife and his mother, and the circumstances that transform it. It is drected by Simon Stone and features performances by Cate Blanchett, Richard Roxburgh and Robyn Nevin.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGVweOZA2zg
A beautifully, unapologetically Australian film
The Guardian
The films are rich and diverse, moving from the warm humour of Cate Blanchett reconnecting with her mother-in-law to a battered Rose Byrne having visions of Jesus.
The Observer
The Boy Castaways
We set out to be wrecked.
Four drifters find themselves lured into a vast playhouse, deep in the heart of the city. Taken in hand by the enigmatic leading lady, the men are plunged ever deeper into a labyrinth of jealousy, betrayal, violence and sex, dissolving the lines between desire and death. The Boy Castaways is a haunting ode to the magic of the stage and the visceral power of music
Lucky Miles
They started as strangers, by journey’s end they’d nearly killed each other
An Indonesian fishing boat abandons a group of Iraqi and Cambodian men on a remote part of the Western Australian coast. Told there is a bus over the dunes, the men are abandoned to a desert the size of Poland. While most are quickly rounded up, three men with little in common but their history of misfortune elude capture and begin an epic but confused journey drawn on by their hopes amplified by the empty desert. Pursued by an army reservist unit more concerned with playing ball sports and music, our three protagonists wander deeper into trouble, searching desperately among the harsh beauty of the Pilbara for evidence of a western, liberal democracy. Or the promised bus.
Lucky Miles screened in festivals all over the world. It opened the Adelaide Film Festival in 2007 and went on to win the Audience Award at the Sydney Film Festival, the Special Jury Prize at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, Best Screenplay at the Vladivostok International Film Festival, the Black Pearl for Best New Director at the Middle East International Film Festival, the Grand Prix at the 9th Rencontres Internationales du Cinéma des Antipodes in Saint-Tropez and Best Film at the 3rd Asian Festival of First Films in Singapore. It was also nominated for Best Screenplay at the 2007 Asia Pacific Screen Awards, and Best Film and Best Screenplay at the 2007 Australian Film Institute Awards and the 2007 IF Awards.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIDjECVY1dg
Exciting, political and darkly humorous. *****
The Advertiser
Brilliant! One of the great Australian films about Australia.
Best Trick Ever
(2 x 60 episodes, ABC2)
Australian magician James Galea is on a search for the holy grail of magic…the BEST TRICK EVER. Across this series, audiences will witness some of the world’s greatest magic tricks and meet the fascinating inventors who created them. James also takes the audience into the little known world of the con artist and reveals some of their most inner secrets.
Never before has a show had such access the secret world of magic. The closely guarded, underground world of magic has only ever been witnessed by those with a key to the secret society – James Galea has that key and BEST TRICK EVER takes audiences on a journey to experience the world of magic from the inside – a ride that muggles can never normally witness.
For the first time, audiences are privy to private conversations magicians have never shared – like one of the world’s finest con artists who has never before shown his face on camera, exposing moves and classified artefacts that would land him in a world of trouble…if caught.
Some of the magicians we meet along the way have not only invented magic for the world’s greatest magicians (including David Blaine, David Copperfield and Dynamo) but are legends in their own right.