Stenders is a heroic filmmaker. He's doing R&D for the rest of us timid, eager to please, pussy type auteurs. Kriv is here not only to ask 'what if' but to do the work and find out. Necessity is the mother of invention and the necessities of his budgetary constraints mean we now know how a film that is (what looks like) one take, with largely improvising actors, can work. While good, this isn't the greatest film ever made, but Stenders is mining promising territory with his experiments and I'm waiting for him to strike gold with the right components applied to the right idea, and a bit of luck. I'd like to see him use his freedom to try bolder subject matter. The family secret in this film felt a little too familiar in today's media-sphere. Still, I can't think of another Australian filmmaker still working in Australia as worth keeping an eye on as Stenders, except maybe the guys who made Black Water.
