Trailer
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Fwends
Thu
16
Thu 16 Oct 6:00 PM
Sold Out
Palace Nova Eastend: Cinema 8
General Admission
Unclassified 15+
96 Mins October
| Sophie Somerville’s Fwends is a breezy, quietly resonant debut that captures the tension between closeness and drift with remarkable clarity. It follows Em (Emmanuelle Mattana), a Sydney-based lawyer grappling with workplace burnout, who travels to Melbourne for a weekend with Jessie (Melissa Gan), her childhood friend who is navigating a heartbreak. Their easy rapport, built on shared history and quiet understanding, begins to shift. Improvisation-based storytelling is rarely attempted in Australian cinema, and even more rarely achieved with this much warmth, wit and emotional clarity. Somerville, working with Mattana and Gan as co-writers and performers, creates a work that feels lived-in and attuned to the things we struggle to say aloud. Fwends lingers in the space between comfort and discomfort, between affection and distance, and asks what remains when intimacy begins to shift in subtle, irreversible ways. Recognised for its rousing, rare, funny and powerful friendship between women, Fwends premiered at the Berlinale Forum and won the Caligari Film Prize 2025 for stylistic and thematic innovation. |
October