‘Here Out West’: Review

Dir. Fadia Abboud, Lucy Gaffy, Julie Kalceff, Ana Kokkinos, Leah Purcell. Australia. 2021. 101 mins.

Featuring eight interconnected slice-of-life snapshots set across a single day in Western Sydney by five female directors, Here Out West is an meaningful and moving anthology film that makes big moves to show Australia’s diversity in genuine ways. Each chapter is intimate in focus, with a handful of characters, brief by design to fit 101 minutes in total, and firmly concerned with the day-to-day. Eight emerging screenwriters from the area work in nine spoken languages to deliver this ambitious, if occasionally slight, film which uses the same DoP,  production designer, costume designer, editor, composer and sound designer to give the end product stylistic cohesion — painting its diverse portraits with a communal filmic brush.

Not a tourist-baiting shot of Sydney Harbour in sight.

Here Out West opened 2021’s Sydney Film Festival and is about to relase in theatres domestically, although the pandemic may impact its run during the nation’s largest Covid-19 outbreak yet. With the Australian Broadcasting Corporation tied to the production, TV and digital should help the feature continue connecting with homegrown audiences. International festivals and streaming services seeking a thoughtful drama that does more than pay lip service to representation should also take note. 

Following a call-out from production company Co-Curious looking for young writers in the area to sign on to the project, the anthology brings newcomer and veteran directors such as Ana Kokkinos (Head On, Blessed) and Leah Purcell (The Drover’s Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson) together onscreen to film their work. The result is rooted in reality but with plenty of imagination, hoping to showcase Australian stories as well as Australian dreams. Opener We, The Spiders, for example, takes inspiration from writer Nisrine Amine’s childhood and her family’s embrace by their Aussie neighbours. But the story ends with Nancy (Geneviève Lemon) fleeing a hospital with her new-born granddaughter while babysitting eight-year-old Amirah (Mia-Lore Bayeh), setting Here Out West’s subsequent strands in motion, and demonstrating it clearly dwells in fiction.  

While absconding, Nancy encounters carpark security guard Jorge (Christian Ravello), whose penchant for poetry and struggles with life outside his native Chile fuel the film’s second section. From there, the links between chapters are equally incidental but rarely feel forced, imparting a sense of community without everything-is-connected schmaltz. Some segues, such as when the tale of bickering pals Rashid (Rahel Romahn), Dino (Thuso Lekwape) and Robi (Arka Das) dovetail into Ashmita’s (Leah Vandenberg) quest to communicate in Bengali with her dying father, are as sensitive and poignant as the narratives around them.  

The writers also weave in thoughts on place, family, belonging, hope and resilience through Here Out West’s stories, which also span Vietnamese brothers finding different ways to fit in, a Filipino nurse working double shifts, and a mother and daughter closing down their Chinese restaurant. Even when a segment plays out as expected, it builds a perceptive character study, with strong performances across the board. And when a chapter surprises - as with The Musician, about Kurdish refugees striving to make a better life that still reminds them of home - it boosts the feature’s quiet potency.  

Here Out West is as much about the collective effect as its individual instalments. One of its biggest aesthetic wins comes from its pivotal setting and commitment to surveying Western Sydney’s multicultural reality with naturalism and authenticity. Filling its frames with highway overpasses, suburban streets, busy hospitals and cluttered homes that actually look lived-in, there is refreshingly not a tourist-baiting shot of Sydney Harbour in sight.