By MARA PATTISON-SOWDEN
A SHORT film with the classic Australian message of “what goes around comes around” has won the world’s biggest short film competition.
It also happens to feature the Black Spur Roadhouse, a McKenzie’s bus and a raft of extras from Narbethong.
We’ve All Been There, which was mostly shot on location at the roadhouse over two days last December, took out the top gong from 700 entries last week at Tropfest in Sydney.
Roadhouse manager Brooke Nisi said it was a fantastic experience and even better that the film won.
“This is the little roadhouse in the middle of nowhere going worldwide,” she said.
Truce Films producer Michael Ciccone said the win was unexpected but it wouldn’t have happened without the community support they received.
“They were the most hospitable people, without people like that we couldn’t have made this film,” he said.
“The community support from you (The Mail) and the locals was quite impressive – Narbethong CFA brought a fire truck out so we could have ‘rain’ one night and without that support it wouldn’t have been possible.”
He said they certainly intended to make the most of the prize, which included speaking to movie executives in Los Angeles to make the short into a full-length feature film.
The film was chosen by a distinguished panel made up of actors Sam Worthington, Richard Roxburgh, Magda Szubanski, Rebecca Gibney and Gyton Grantley as well as Tropfest winner 2012 Alethea Jones, film critic Sandy George and director of The Sapphires Wayne Blair.
It explores the idea of shared kindness through goodwill and pay-it-forward style ethics, where a young woman in need gets a dose of kindness from someone who experienced it herself.
We’ve All Been There goes for seven minutes and can be viewed on YouTube for free.
