Forum of Independents - Competition 2011 / Mad Bastards / Australia 2010
Native Australian TJ decides to abandon his disordered life in the big city and to hitchhike across Australia to find the adolescent son he’s never met and the boy’s estranged mother. Offering a strong narrative about the return of a lost father, Brendan Fletcher’s debut draws strength from the authenticity of nonactors in the lead roles, the gorgeous Australian landscape, and the music of the folk/rock group Pigram Brothers.
A 13-year-old native Australian boy named Bullet is growing up with his mother in a small, remote Australian town in the northwestern region of Kimberley. But the absence of his father’s authority provokes nothing good, and one day he finds himself in jail on arson charges. The boy’s father TJ decides to abandon his disordered life in the big city and to hitchhike across Australia in order to seek out his estranged wife and the son he’s never met. What influence will the uprooted man’s encounters with various people along the way have on his reunion with his family? And how will the rest of the Aboriginal community respond to the return of a lost father? While writing the script for his directing debut, Brendan Fletcher took inspiration from the stories of native inhabitants in the little-known region of Kimberley. And the casting of nonactors in the lead roles helped create an authentic statement about the ambiguous social standing of Aborigines, which the majority of white Australian society chooses to ignore.
96 min / Color, 35 mm
European premiere
Director Brendan Fletcher
/ Screenplay Brendan Fletcher
/ Dir. of Photography Alan Collins
/ Music Alan Pigram, Stephen Pigram, Alex Lloyd
/ Editor Clare Fletcher
/ Producer David Jowsey, Alan Pigram, Stephen Pigram, Brendan Fletcher
/ Production Bush Turkey Films
/ Cast Dean Daley-Jones, Greg Tait, Lucas Yeeda, Ngaire Pigram
/ Contact Entertainment One Films International
Brendan Fletcher is an Australian producer, screenwriter, and director. In the late 1990s he worked as an assistant director in television (the series "The 50 Foot Show”). In 2000 he directed the short film Kulli Foot, which was nominated by the Australian Film Institute (AFI) for Best Short Drama. He wrote the script for the documentary Texas (2002), cooperating as director and producer with fellow countryman Russell Crowe. He continued his documentary career with the award-winning Black Chicks Talking (2004), which he codirected with actress Leah Purcell, and the TV series "Knot at Home Project” (2006). Fletcher has shot several music videos for the Pigram Brothers, a folk/rock band he invited to participate in his feature debut Mad Bastards (2010). Their music forms an organic part of a movie that was warmly received at Sundance.
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Brendan Fletcher
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