Western
Sydney anthology Here Out West was an unlikely Sydney film festival opener. Now hitting cinemas, its creators hope it will find an audience amid Covid
On the night of 3 November last year, under the elaborate, cavernous ceiling of the State theatre in the centre of Sydney’s CBD, applause broke out for an unlikely opening night film at the Sydney film festival.
The film the festival audience was applauding was Here Out West, an anthology film set in western Sydney, with each of the eight chapters penned by a young, emerging writer. The structure itself, however, was not the most unusual thing about it. More glaring was that the film – featuring nine different languages, a diverse cast, and written by people who live or grew up west of the city centre – refused to see itself as small: a glossy tale of drama, not disadvantage, in Australia’s multicultural suburbs.