We are 12 minutes into Australian directors Jack Clark and Jim Weir’s debut feature film Birdeater when the title finally appears on screen. In those masterful first 12 minutes we are introduced to a couple.Most nights he, Louie, lies and says he is going to his dad’s place when really he is going to a golfing range. And she, Irene, for some reason never leaves the house at all, and is sleeping most of the time.All of this is conveyed through little dialogue, repetitive sequences, montage and spectacular cinematography. And even though not much is happening in the film, you’re on the edge of your seat. Something is off here…“We started with this relationship. Having a relationship where the couple had separation anxiety … We have this couple that need to be around each other and eventually you separate them and see what happens,” says Weir.And what better way to separate a couple than at a buck’s party. So the main plot of Birdeater unravels as Louie, breaking tradition, invites girls to his bucks party. And the film basically roars on from there.“As soon as we had the buck’s party element then we had almost a new genre of film that we were looking at and that's when it really became what it is. Taking a close look at how groups of men behave and how groups of men react to bad male behaviour,” says Weir.In April, The Australian Institute of Criminology’s National Homicide Monitoring Program found that 34 women were killed by an intimate partner in 2022-23, an increase of 28 per cent on the previous year.And although Birdeater doesn’t concern itself with these extreme cases, it aims to explore the problem of toxic male behaviour at its root. With murderers, it is easy for men to detach themselves from the behaviour of those characters whereas with Birdeater the duo wanted to force men to confront themselves.“We wanted to try and hit closer to the bone, go after the more kind of insidious types of abuse that we think is actually common with guys that we grew up with and went to school with,” says Weir.“So we wanted basically a shifting scale of different kinds of men in our ensemble in a way where, hopefully, no guy watching this would feel totally safe. Everyone would be able to see themselves in some way depicted on screen and have to reckon with that.”Birdeater was filmed in the small village of St Albans in Hawkesbury, NSW and despite exploring such universal themes, the film still feels very Australian and this is a translation of the duo’s individuality and identity which is daring in a film culture that is led by other countries.“We have this idea of mateship in Australia which is something that we build a lot of our identity around,” says Clark. “But it does feel like it's somewhat exclusionary to women - it feels like it's structured around men being friends.”“So the film was a little bit about how that makes people outside of that circle feel, and people are able to really easily translate that into a similar part of their own culture. So by finding something specific to Australia, which I think it is, that specificity helps.”Weir and Clark met each other whilst studying at AFTRS, a film school in Sydney, and they say that it is through their collaboration, that this film was such a success.“Often we will be arguing about something and we essentially never compromise - we never really meet in the middle we try and work out which idea is better and quite often that means that there's actually a third idea that neither of us have thought of and it ends up being what we go with,” says Weir.The film will be released in cinemas on July 18. The characters are interesting, the ideas are thoughtful, the score is inventive and the overall look of the film is mesmerising. Even though it is Clark and Weir’s first feature film, Birdeater shows that they have a strong command of their ideas and know how to communicate them visually in creative and stunning ways.Birdeater

On February 16, 2013, writer and filmmaker Bill Bennett wrote this sentence in his blog: “I have a particular need to walk the Camino in Spain. And yet, I’m not sure what that need is.” Exactly 11 years and 3 months later, The Way, My Way – the film based on Bennetts’ experience of walking the Camino – was released in Australia.The Camino de Santiago, or The Way of St. James, is an ancient pilgrimage route ending at the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. There are many different starting points but Bill, at almost 60 years of age, decided his route would be more than 800 kilometres long.Bennett completed the walk in May 2013 and then wrote a book on the adventure.“Writing the book was the completion of my walk,” says Bennett. “Because when I was doing the walk in Santiago I was so confused as to why I had done it. So, I wrote the book to make sense of it all.”The memoir The Way, My Way (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014), based on the walk, was a bestseller.Initially, Bennett had no ambitions of making it into a film. But a film distributor named Richard Becker, who had loved the book, brought it up with Bennett and wouldn’t take no for an answer.“It had a very, very deep impact on him and he came to me and said, I think there’s a movie in this, and I said, No, there’s not. I don't think enough happens. It’s just one bloke walking across Spain, that’s all. And he said, no, if you can get what's in the book into the film then it will find an audience,” explains Bennett.And Bennett ended up creating almost the exact same conditions of his walk. Every bit of Chris Haywood’s (who played Bill) costume was the exact same as what Bill wore. Every geographical location was obsessed over in terms of their accuracy and order in the story, and none were picked just for their beauty. And all of this authenticity ended with a fitting moment of catharsis for Bill as he watched himself (played by an actor), at the end of his walk, have a very vulnerable phone call with his wife (played by herself).“The conversation I had with my wife toward the end of the film. That was where I couldn’t separate myself from myself anymore – that was surreal. It was like I was standing outside of myself looking at myself,” says Bennett.The Way, My Way has been a big success, it just passed $2 million dollars at the Australian and New Zealand Box Office. And Bennett believes there are many factors contributing to this.“I think there's a confluence of factors that have a lot to do with the fact that people are searching for more meaning in their life at the moment. In the same way that the character of Bill is in the film,” says Bennett.And in the same way that Bill Bennett, the director, has been ever since he wrote those first words in his blog eleven and a half years ago. He is still exploring what compelled him to walk more than 800kms in a foreign country, even now as he begins work on the sequel ‘The Way, Her Way’.

The Sydney Film Festival, which went for 12 days, finished on Sunday 16 June and the Italian black and white comedy drama film, There’s Still Tomorrow, took out the prestigious Sydney Film Prize.Directed by Paola Cortellesi (her debut feature), the film is set in post-war Italy and follows a housewife who receives a mysterious letter which prompts her to face her abusive husband and hope for a better future.The Film Festival Jury said in a joint statement: “C’è ancora domani (There’s Still Tomorrow) deftly weaves humour, style, and pop music into a dazzling black-and-white cinematic event, then it delivers an ending that will take your breath away.”The film competed with 12 others for the prize, but overall there were 197 films from 69 countries including 28 World Premieres and 133 Australian Premieres, bringing together hundreds of new international and local stories.The Bugle attended some screenings (not all) of the festival, and these were the four standouts:I Saw the TV GlowTwo awkward and lonely teenagers, Owen (Justice Smith) and Maddy (Bridgette Lundy-Paine) bond with each other over a late night show to the point of obsession. And when it is canceled they start to question whether the things that happened in the show were fiction or reality.The film is beautifully constructed and shot by director Jane Schoenbrun with hues of pinks, purples, blues and greens invading every frame. And the performances from the two leads are both eerily affecting and devastating.The film also examines the sadness and depression which comes from the monotony of reality and the melancholy we feel when the life we are leading is not quite what we imagined as a child. The film is filled with a horrible sense of dread and anxiety and is quite scary at times. But ultimately it is a reminder of the dangers and importance of dreams and fiction.I Saw The TV Glow. Credit: A24.Kinds of KindnessAn anthology film by Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos about how far we would go for the people we love. The first chapter is about a man who is given a schedule by his boss each day which he mustn’t deviate from. The second is about a husband who is suspicious about the identity of his wife when she is found after being lost at sea. And the last is about a woman who has been given a mission to find a ‘special’ person by the cultish group she is involved with.Each chapter is filled with Lanthimos’ signature dry humour as well as his ridiculous and hopeless worldview. And each features the same actors; Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Defoe, Hong Chau, Margaret Qulley, and others; performing different roles.  The film deals with individuals trying to make their way in the world through the connections they make with others. And it wonders what happens when these connections we rely upon so deeply are severed or tested. All chapters are shot sleekly, feature manic performances and have some spectacular needle drops. And they all induce a sort of discomfort inside you. As though the little things we use to survive reality are as fragile as glass.The BikeridersThe newest Austin Butler and Tom Hardy film follows the real Motorcycle club, Outlaws MC, which began as a social club and community for outsiders, but descended into violence.The film is told through the eyes of Jodie Comer’s character Kathy, who is the wife of Austin Butler’s Benny, as she recounts to a journalist (Mike Faist) what happened to the Outlaws. The film feels very inspired by mafia movies such as Goodfellas, but is also an ode to the 60’s and the motorcycle culture that blossomed in that time. The film is based on a book of photography of the same name written and photographed by Danny Lyon. Although the film is definitely an enjoyable watch, it lacks the cohesion and excitement of the films it seems to be inspired by. The characters are also a little undeveloped and as a result it is harder to be sucked into the emotional core of the movie. But the film's main theme does give it a point of difference. It seems to say that creation, after being given to the public, can morph into things that the creator did not intend it to. And this is definitely an interesting idea. A Different ManAn A24 film where Sebastian Stan plays a man with Neurofibromatosis who undergoes facial reconstructive surgery. When the surgery is successful he takes on a whole new identity only to meet a man, with the same condition he used to have, who is much more confident and happy then he is.It is a fascinating flip on the usual Beauty and the Beast type storyline. And it uses humour, meta commentary and actors to its advantage. The first third is a sad, almost meditative look at this man’s life with his condition. And then the last two thirds just observe him as he slowly descends into madness. And the film’s tone perfectly reflects these different stages. A Different Man. Credit: A24