Male Actors Needed for VCA Graduate Student Film

Grief is an interesting experience. You can experience it in yourself, through somebody else and through a whole community. I’ve been interested in how humans experience grief for a while now, but I wasn’t quite sure how to express it. My work so far as a writer/director has always been stronger when I am inspired from my past experiences. For this film I decided to go this familiar route.

When I Go follows Delilah, a thirteen year old girl, as she goes on an annual beach trip with a group of friends and their fathers. When an unexpected guest arrives at the getaway, unspoken grief is brought to the surface.

When I was growing up, I went to an all-girls school and one of the highlights of the year was the father-daughter camp. Not only was this weekend something insanely exciting for us as children, but the fathers looked forward to it every year as well. Each year we would return to the same camping area South of Sydney’s city, completely surrounded by National Park and right next to the beach. It was a complete escape. Even years later, the impression of place is so clear in my memory.

The idea for When I Go came about when I was thinking about these camps and how to forge it with my interest in the human experience of grief. And so I wondered, what if somebody wasn’t there who was the year before? The film surrounds the main character, thirteen-year-old Delilah. In the past year (since the last camp), her friend Phoebe has passed away. The film surrounds the idea of time having passed since the loss, but the feeling of someone missing still remaining in everyday life.

One of the things that I was sure of when writing this script was that I wanted it to be really subtle. I wanted the experience of grief to be second, and the camp to be first. As the girls go about their usual camping activities, such as kayaking and card games, everyone in the group is acutely aware of the loss, but no one speaks of it. A spanner is put in the works when Phoebe’s father, Peter, arrives at the camp. He was invited by the other fathers last minute to include him and support him in this hard time. When faced with loss, the community is so important in supporting one another. Peter’s presence at the camp, however, confuses Delilah’s experience of grief so far because now, she has to face it head on. Up to this point, Delilah has mourned quite privately. The presence of Peter and the support of her own dad encourages her to share her memories of Phoebe.