At 118 minutes, My Melbourne follows in the footsteps of Modern Love. It allows us a glimpse into the lives of four people on the cusp of self-actualization, bound by their marginalized identities and Melbourne, the Australian city they have found a home in.
Inspired by true incidents, the quartet of films (each titled after a pivotal female character) cuts through class, race, sexuality, disability and gender to show how severely displacement—no matter its form—colours the human experience. Amid snaking buses and the constant din of a metropolis relentless in its pursuit, cinematographer Brad Francis paints a city that’s expansive enough to not just accommodate diversity but let it thrive.
Nandini
Directed by Onir along with William Duan, this first installment follows Indraneel (Arka Das), a gay Indian man, and his estranged father who is visiting him to honour the last wish of his recently-deceased wife.
No women feature in this short and yet it’s titled Nandini. We’re never expressly told that it was the name of Indraneel’s mother, a woman whose absence manages to achieve what her presence never could. But we know it nonetheless because certain truths don’t need spelling out. Arka Das and Mouli Ganguly are luminous as two men using shared loss and grief to find a way to each other again.
Das will remind you of Pratik Gandhi’s career-defining turn in a similar role in Baai from Modern Love Mumbai (2022). The prickly father-son dynamic is not too dissimilar from the recent The Mehta Boys. The uncomfortable silences and corrosive divergences that even time has failed to lull belong to the same universe of familial haunts and aches as Deepti Naval and Kalki Koechlin’s Goldfish (2022).
Nandini has sparse dialogue. Just tight closeups, a massive churning of emotions and scenes that speak volumes without saying anything at all. In one, Indraneel quietly rubs off his nail polish, erasing a part of his identity to make himself more palatable to his father.
In another, he sheds copious tears into his dead mother’s silk saree. In yet another, the camera lingers hesitantly for an extra moment on Indraneel’s bedside at Onir’s memoir, a text that is essentially the filmmaker bringing his own chair to the table because he was never offered one.
Jules
It’s the story of Sakshi (Arushi Sharma), a newly-wed restaurant trainee who has freshly emigrated to Australia and her unlikely kinship with Jules (Kat Stewart), a homeless woman with a penchant for solving crossword puzzles.
Though the segment is directed by Arif Ali along with Zhao Tammy Yang, it has been marketed under Imtiaz Ali’s towering name, who serves as the creative director. It’s as bizarre as naming your film after one character when it revolves almost entirely around another.
Jules also doesn’t clearly delve into how the chutzpah of one woman imbues courage in the other. Instead it’s a much better exploration of how we tend to show only half-truths on social media and how people with isolating real lives latch on to virtual validation for dear life. Hope projection on Instagram often starts as a coping mechanism, soon devolves into survival instinct, and quickly transforms into delusion if left unchecked.
Emma
Directed by Rima Das along with Samira Cox, this short follows Emma (Ryanna Skye Lawson), a young dancer suffering from Usher Syndrome as she grapples with the possibility of increased hearing and visual impairment and the impending absolute loss of the two senses.
Rima Das puts her singular gift of fusing nature’s whimsy with flowing moments of quietude to glorious use. She uses Emma’s love for dancing as a tool to build movement as scenes glide, melt into each other. Although the film is rich sensorily, it, along with Jules, feels like the languorous noon hours sandwiched between the hyperactivity of mornings and twilight.
Setara
You can always count on Kabir Khan to dole out a rousing sports story. A sharp contrast compared to the other three films stacked neatly together in this anthology, Setara is a burst of energy, ambition, and vigor.
It follows Setara (Setara Amiri), a high-school Afghan refugee as she tries to build a new life in Melbourne with her mother and elder sister after being forced to flee the Taliban.
Setara is a rare example of poignant, insightful, and assured filmmaking. Khan, along with co-director Puneet Gulati, skillfully showcases how little the outside world knows or cares about any war-torn region, how armed conflicts can disturb and dismantle generations, and the interior lives and unspoken fears of refugees piecing together a new normal.
It’s a joy watching a hijab-wearing Afghan fast-bowler hit wickets in Australia and find acceptance through cricket after being made to bid a bitter farewell to the sport that’s her all. In its struggle and triumph, Setara mirrors Netflix’s lovely survival drama The Swimmers (2022), but since it’s a sports story, it will bring back your best memories from Khan’s 83 (2021) and Chandu Champion (2024).
Watch out for the scene in which Setara’s hijab slips off her head as she attempts a difficult catch and how her entire team comes to her aid. At a time when full-length features are disappointing every Friday, maybe anthology films can show the way.
