THE Australian film Wish You Were Here, from the team behind the critically acclaimed Animal Kingdom, has impressed audiences at its world premiere in the US, where it has opened this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
The much awaited film – a dark, edgy thriller starring Joel Edgerton and directed by fellow actor turned filmmaker Kieran Darcy-Smith – premiered on Thursday and had the honour of kicking off the festival’s prestigious world dramatic competition, which Animal Kingdom won in 2010.
“It’s everything I wanted it to be,” Darcy-Smith said before the film’s unveiling in the snow-capped surrounds of Park City in Utah. “There’s no question that it being hyped has added pressure – with the success that Animal Kingdom has had, and Blue-Tongue Films [the collective behind both films]. All our sessions at Sundance are sold out.”
Wish You Were Here, which Darcy-Smith co-wrote with his wife, actress Felicity Price (who also stars in the film), tells of four mates who go to Cambodia on holiday. On the last night, under a full moon, one of them goes missing. When the others return home without him, dark secrets soon begin to emerge.
The festival’s director, John Cooper, said having an Australian film, particularly one like Wish You Were Here, to open this year’s event was an obvious choice from early on.
“It’s the first film we took, in fact,” he said. “It’s really well done. I like the thriller aspects of it. Some festivals shy away from genre films, but we don’t.”
Cooper also praised the collective spirit and focus of the Blue-Tongue team, whose other members include Joel Edgerton’s brother Nash (whose short film Bear is also screening).
“They’re good. They’re edgy,” he said. “They seem to work fast and well together. There’s these little packs emerging, teams of filmmakers – Blue-Tongue in particular – where there’s this coalition mentality: that we’re going to make films, one’s going to produce, one’s going to write and so on. You learn that way. There’s a big learning curve in that space where you can all learn from.”
Sundance’s founder and president, Robert Redford, revealed that his upcoming offshoot event, Sundance London, could be repeated in Australia if all went according to plan.
”Why not? We’ve agreed to put a toe in the water, to try it for three days,” he said of the event in London in April.
”Based on how we’re received, then we’ll go, ‘OK, let’s expand and talk to Sydney and Brazil and so on’. I want to make sure we’re welcome – I wouldn’t want to push ourselves on others. We have to be invited. So, we’ll go from there. I’d love to come to Sydney. So we’ll see.”
This year’s festival, set amid great uncertainty in the world economy, has films that sharply critique the Obama administration as well as several celebrating the Arab Spring in the Middle East.
Redford, a former political aspirant, said this was how he liked it and he was “happy for the films to do the talking”.