FAQ

A friend of mine went through a pretty rough time. One of the characters in the film goes through a similar experience. My friends favorite song during that part of his life was Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. The characters and their relationships loosely reflect elements of the song and themes of the song can be found in the film; the abuse of trust, the allure of forbidden love, lust, the reversal of fortunes, remorse and ultimately destruction. Over the years I have watched my friend come to terms with his situation and although he is still not totally happy with everything, he has managed to find something within it to make sense of his life. The film also leaves us in the end with the notion that life, although rarely perfect, is something worth living. If nothing else, it is an experience worth having, an opportunity for the expansion of the spirit. This is the spirit in the broadest sense and not one limited to the religious. So yes, parts of the story were based on true events.

To be aware of lifes imperfections is to travel hopefully and with that comes a realization of inner strength and compassion. The characters in the film lead ordinary lives but what is an ordinary life? Life is unpredictable and in its very nature can only ever be an unknown. People are complex and often what appears to be an ordinary life is far from that. The film touches on the dreams and desires of the characters and their motivation for some of the things they do and the decisions they make.

I wanted to create a feeling of looking through windows into peoples lives. To allow the narrative to unfold gradually as the various story lines develop and interweave. The characters are a diverse mix of ethnicities and ages because the theme of the film is universal. At some point in life we all experience loss, hopelessness and hope. The script was written with three interweaving stories and what I liked about that was that I could create a real sense of separateness between the characters, but the fact that they live in a close community meant that their lives were inadvertently bound to cross over. It is very much something that occurs in a small country like New Zealand; the chances of knowing mutual people without knowing that you do and it is this very phenomena that can makes us feel even more isolated when we find ourselves alone. So often people ask why is it in a time when we can communicate and get around more easily than ever before in history, that people feel an increased sense of isolation?