Filmmaker Statement

Bottleneck was an idea cultivated over the course of two years and in February 2022, we finally made it a reality. I read copious amounts of news articles about people, mainly kids, throwing rocks and objects at cars on highways. I wanted to delve deep into this issue, so I researched incidents all around Australia and the world. I found that this tends to happen more often in lower socioeconomic areas. I knew there was an opportunity to create a film from this very simple idea and create characters in a world like this, the problem is, I don’t come from a world like this and needed an authentic voice to write the story. It just so happened that I met Benji Menday in my third year at AFTRS in our screen class and I pitched my idea to him. Benji grew up in Campbelltown, and has experienced incidents like this one in his community. It was truly a filmmaking collaboration like no other I’ve had before. We decided to base Bottleneck in Campbelltown because not only did Benji grow up the