A Sorell teenager’s short film about the cost of living crisis will screen at the Sydney Opera House next month after being named a finalist on a phone-shot film competition.
Mack Green, 16, wrote and directed Compunction, which is a finalist in the SF3 Film Festival for films shot at least partly on a phone. It will screen on November 1.
The film has already won Green the Emerging Filmmaker award at two New South Wales festivals, the Perfect Light Film Festival and the Sweeping Plains Film Festival.
“It’s very exciting,” the media student at Rosny College told Pulse.
Compunction follows a struggling father who can barely afford a birthday present for his daughter and decides to break into the local post office.
Green said the title refers to “the feeling of guilt or stress before or after doing something bad”.
The story came from his own family’s experience and his father plays the lead role.
“I’m trying to make people more aware of the cost of living crisis,” he said.
“It’s affecting families, young people, everyone like that.”
Green said the film showed how “this cost of living crisis is making people do things that they wouldn’t usually do”.
The 20-minute film was shot over a month, mostly in Richmond, where his mother owns the post office. Locals let the crew film at the Richmond Police Station and the IGA. Some scenes were shot at his father’s house in Sorell.
Green said 12 to 14 people helped with the shoot.
Another of his films this year, Patience, won Best Senior Scripted Film at the Stuff It! Student Film Festival in Queensland last week.
He said “my dream career would be to be a director”, but was “not particularly interested in going all Hollywood”.
Green and his father have booked flights to Sydney to attend the screening.
The full version is free to watch on YouTube.
