Canberra filmmaker Sotiris Dounoukos has received international attention with his short film A Single Body, which has recently been shown at the Toronto International Film Festival. And although that's an achievement in itself, he's also preparing for something even bigger: his first feature film.
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A Single Body centres on David and Wani, two close friends who work in an abattoir who are close to opening their own butchery until the arrival of a new worker threatens their plans.
Dounoukos says, "The film's about the ephemerality of the biggest things we connect with in life – or seek to connect to -– friends, family, dreams, work. We're attracted to forging strong bonds with these things, despite their fragility. I wanted to explore this apparent paradox in the film, and the emotional life that underpins it.:
The idea for the film, he says, came from a chance meeting with two abattoir workers in Melbourne, which is where the script was written.
"Their story evoked much of what I was told about my father's early years with his brother as new arrivals in Australia, their dreams and friendship, and how it was cut short in the end."
It wasn't easy to get the filmmade, he says, but eventually it was funded by French, Greek and Australian sources.
The producers sent A Single Body to Toronto via an online festivals site and Dounoukos travelled over with it, enjoying the opportunities the festival presents to talk people about the projects he has planned.
A Single Body had its world premiere in Melbourne in August, and will screen in Greece, Brazil, Cyprus and the US in the coming months.
Dounoukos was raised in Canberra and was attracted to filmmmaking while a student at Dickson College.
He went on to study at the Victorian College of the Arts School of Film and Television.
"My graduating production there, Mona Lisa, won the Melbourne International Film Festival, then screened at more than150 festivals, including Edinburgh, Valladolid, Moscow and Seattle International Film Festival."
He says, " I was the ACT Arts Fellow in 2011. I also studied arts /law at the ANU."
And he never lost his interest in film. At the Australian National University, he says, "Gino Moliterno's insights into Italian and European cinema, particularly filmmakers like [Vittorio] De Sica and [Pier Paolo] Pasolini, opened my eyes even further to what was possible. And like everyone in Canberra in the 1990s , there was Andrew Pike – the films he brought to town brought not just the outside world to us, but the possibilities in cinema that exist far beyond Australia. I think this is what I took into film school years later and is what informed my approach to Mona Lisa, when I made it at the VCA."
Dounoukos is now preparing to adapt Helen Garner's book Joe Cinque's Consolation to the screen. The book is an account of the trials of ANU student Anu Singh,her friend Madhavi Rao and the death of Singh's boyfriend Joe Cinque.
"I attended ANU law school with many of the people involved in the events detailed in Helen's book. Once Helen got to know me and how I wanted to adapt the film, she was comfortable offering me the option. I wrote the script with Sydney writer Matt Rubinstein, who was also an ex-lawyer and ex-colleague of mine. Sue Murray, from Fandango Australia came on board as producer once I was at the Binger Institute in Amsterdam, developing the first draft of the script. We're now in the financing stages, have our sales agent and local investors attached. We plan to shoot next year."
