'Roughneck' director gets dream response

LED by the Edgerton brothers, Australian filmmakers are making their presence felt in Utah.

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AUSTRALIAN filmmakers have reaffirmed the country's reputation for drama at the Sundance Film Festival in the US, where Wish You Were Here has opened to a positive reception.

The first feature from Sydney writer-director Kieran Darcy-Smith is a psychological drama starring Joel Edgerton and Teresa Palmer.

It opened the World Cinema Dramatic competition to a packed audience at the Utah event, which began on Friday.

"To have the Sundance selectors not only invite us into competition but also to offer us the opening night screening is hard to describe," Darcy-Smith says.

The film follows four 30-something Australians on holiday in Cambodia. When one of them goes missing, the lives of all are changed forever.

Edgerton's brother Nash stars in and is co-author of Bear (with Animal Kingdom's David Michod), which has been selected for the festival's short film competition.

Both films have come out of directors' collective Blue Tongue Films, founded by the Edgerton brothers and Darcy-Smith, with Michod a more recent member.

Introducing Wish You Were Here , director of programming Trevor Groth described Blue Tongue as "talented, cool, roughneck filmmakers".

"All I ever wanted was for the story to move people in a positive way and for them to truly enjoy those two hours in the cinema," Darcy-Smith says. "It is an enormously prestigious platform from which to launch your first movie and there are a great many opportunities that come with that. It's a nice feeling."

Nash Edgerton and Michod's Bear is a gem.

"Nash had an idea for a short and asked me if I wanted to help him write it," Michod says.

"I'd just finished Animal Kingdom and wanted to start writing again but couldn't remember how. Bear seemed a good way to get back into the swing. Nash is exceptionally good at creating visceral cinema experiences. He knows what will work. My main job is just to make the connecting tissue feel natural and plausible -- to make it invisible, basically."

Bear was selected as one of nine films for the Cannes Film Festival 2011 Short Film Competition and received a "great reception there", says Edgerton. "People responded beyond what my expectations for the film were, so it was a lot of fun to be there."

Sundance was founded by Robert Redford in 1981 with the mission to support independent films. The main feature awards are announced next Saturday and short films tomorrow.