Expat Australian filmmakers in Los Angeles and London are coping as best they can through the COVID-19 pandemic, including supporting each other.
Isabel Lucas, Hunter Page-Lochard, Lily Sullivan and US actor Bobbi Salvor Menuez ('Transparent', 'Nocturnal Animals') lead the ensemble cast of Daniel Askill's debut feature film, a currently untitled psychological thriller.
Stretching along the river Ganges rests Varanasi, the holiest of India’s seven sacred cities, and a place where devout Hindus go to die in hopes of achieving moksha - becoming liberated from the cycle of rebirth. Hindu scriptures say that a soul has to undergo 8.4 million rebirths before reaching the human form, the only form one can attain moksha, and dying in Varanasi and being cremated along the banks of the river is believed to be the ideal way of achieving this. Several so-called ‘death hotels’ exist to accommodate believers who abandon their lives and come here in wait for death - some for as long as 40 years.
Premiering on June 13 at this year’s Sydney Film Festival, Beyersdorf's short is the story of a single mother who wakes up in the middle of the night to find that she’s glowing.