This Is Not Here

Four Australian soldiers become compromised when they capture a young Afghani boy spying on their reconnaissance position.

Set in a liminal desert space, The Road (Ճանապարհ) contemplates how it feels to be in the world at this moment through overlapping narratives of isolation and connection. The stories of five sets of characters, suspended in time and space, unfold and collide on the very same road, set against a soundtrack by the Armenian-Australian jazz band, Zela Margossian Quintet. “Each of the five narratives in our work are centred around decisive moments in people’s lives; from this point forward these characters will be forever changed as they undergo some sort of renewal, redemption or transcendence,” says director Charlotte Mungomery. “We were also interested in the conceptual and almost existential notion of a road and humanity’s attempt to control the uncontrollable and tame the untameable.”

Our hero begins her journey through an unsettling and painterly world. She drives down a highway, arrives at an abandoned house, travels through a seemingly endless corridor of broken-hearted lovers, praises love out of a window, and finds furtive romance in a garden. Familiar domestic spaces are rendered uncanny as she muses on love and its power to intoxicate the world around us. This moody vision is torn apart and laid bare. A frenzied film set is deconstructed and our characters play and revel in the cynical absurdity of this mad human endeavour that simultaneously thrills and depresses us.