[Feature] Australia (MIFF 2022) Director / Writer / Editor: Goran Stolevski Producers: Kristina Ceyton & Samantha Jennings
MIFF Accelerator Lab alumnus Goran Stolevski delivers a heart-meltingly tender, quintessentially Melbourne queer coming-of-age tale that will make you swoon from beginning to end.
It’s the summer of 1999 and two teens fresh out of high school – reserved, Serbian-born Nikola (Elias Anton, Barracuda) and fiery Ebony (Hattie Hook) – are partners for a dance competition. On the big day, Nikola gets a distressed call from Ebony, asking to be rescued from the other side of town, so he enlists her brother, the charming Adam (Thom Green, Dance Academy; Downriver, MIFF Premiere Fund 2015), to take him there. On the drive, amid traffic and amicable swagger, the two young men discover a mutual spark … but Adam is leaving the country in 24 hours.
Supported by the MIFF Premiere Fund, this heady story of youth and love is the second feature from Australian director Stolevski (Would You Look at Her, MIFF 2018; You Deserve Everything, MIFF 2016) – named among Variety’s global ‘10 Directors to Watch for 2022’ list, and whose long-form debut You Won’t Be Alone also screens at this year’s MIFF following its celebrated Sundance premiere. Tactile, funny and heartfelt, Of an Age captures the hinterland of suburbia, the strains of immigrant families, and the crossroads of desire and big dreams in teenage years, as well as lip-biting moments of attraction and anticipation. Like in Weekend before it, time in Of an Age is both constraint and catalyst, with Stolevski depicting the coming-together of two twin souls and the bracing realisation that everything has its moment.
In this article OF AN AGE director Goran Stolevski discusses suburban Melbourne being the least romantic place in the world (in the 1990s!), skipping Sundance, gaining inspiration from Irish teenagers going to parties, and how Accelerator Lab was crucial to his career.
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