Aussies Cannes – Strongest in Decades

Australia has one of its strongest representations in over two decades at this year's Cannes festival – showing five features and three short films.

After a hit with Lantana, director Ray Lawrence is returning to Cannes next week with the drama Jindabyne, which centres on a murder that has reverberations for a group of fishermen and their wives. The cast includes Gabriel Byrne, Laura Linney and Leah Purcell.

Screening in various sections are the Aboriginal comedy-drama Ten Canoes, directed by Rolf de Heer and starring JamieGulpilil; the black comedy Suburban Mayhem, directed by Paul Goldman and starring Kiwi actress Emily Barclay; and Look Both Ways which was last year's AFI award-winner. Also screening are three short films The Water Diary, directed by Jane Campion; Sexy Thing; and Snow.

     2;37 ATTENTION GRABBER

Low-budget drama 2:37 has attracted plenty of attention. Its teenage cast, including Frank Sweet, talked up the achievement of director Murali Thalluri, a 21-year-old from Adelaide who wrote the film after a suicide attempt at age 19. The film centres on six students having to deal with difficult issues during one day in a suburban high school.

Thalluri said a friend killed himself after posting him a video suicide note three years ago. Six months later, after spending years in hospital as a child with kidney problems and having lost an eye in a stabbing, he was working in the Tax Office when he attempted suicide himself.

"The next morning I woke up and threw up all the drugs I'd taken - the alcohol and the codeine.

"I wrote 2:37, which was called All in a Day back then, in 36 hours. I just had this innate desire to make this film."

     HIT THE RICH LIST

Investing the $50,000 he had received in a victim-of-crime payment and after approaching everyone listed in a newspaper booklet on the 20 richest people in Adelaide, Thalluri raised enough to start shooting the film. .

"After the suicide attempt, I wrote down a list of goals that I wanted to achieve by the end of my career," he said.

"Cannes was one of them … When I got a phone call [from the festival] I was in tears."

     MAKE MORE MOVIES

The chief executive of the Film Finance Corporation, Brian Rosen, described the five features as "a wonderful representation of quality and diversity". But he said Australia needed to make far more features than the 16 funded by the government agency this year – at least 40 to 50 annually – in order to generate hits.