Australia
Writer/Producer: Stephanie Dower
Writer/Director: Tanya Modini
Genre: Young Adult Romance
In a western Queensland town, a young woman with physical disability and the local footy hero commence a sexual relationship which not only confronts and divides their small-town community but challenges the couple’s expectations of themselves.
Growing up as the only wheelchair user in the small, western Queensland town of Bunji, year 12 student Scout Baker has always been cocooned by her mother and her community. They assume that living in Bunji under their watchful gaze will be all that life has to offer Scout given that she lives with chronic disability. But Scout dreams of escape and following her passion to study music if she can muster up the courage to actually leave town. When Scout reluctantly takes the stage at the Bunji pub, the local footy hero and town heartthrob, Eli, arrives and hears Scout playing a song that he hasn’t heard since his mother sung it to him when he was a child. With his mother’s sudden death six years prior and his father’s ever-growing dependence on alcohol, Eli is struggling with grief and anxiety. He is immediately driven by a sentimental yearning to get to know Scout. But when their unlikely friendship develops into a sexual relationship, expectations are shattered. Their unforeseen desire not only shakes up how Scout and Eli they see themselves, but challenges and divides the town. When tragedy strikes, Scout is forced to confront the limitations and biases that exist in her own mind and try to seize her independence before fear forever entraps her in Bunji.