It sounds like a recipe for disaster: shoot your first feature film at sea, in the confines of a small fishing trawler, with a largely untrained cast, most of whom don’t speak English. For extra points, shoot in the wet tropical heat of a Cambodian summer and make it a harsh story without much of a feelgood factor.
But writer-director Rodd Rathjen refuses to sound heroic when he talks about the making of Buoyancy, a film that manages to be both brutal and beautiful; a tense thriller and an important social justice narrative that will probably be the most important and internationally acclaimed Australian film of the year.
