Once upon a Time in the West SUBURBIA AND IDENTITY IN JASON RAFTOPOULOS’ WEST OF SUNSHINE
On the surface, Jason Raftopoulos’ debut feature, West of Sunshine (2017), is a domestic drama about a day in the life of a man doing what he has to to survive with his son by his side. In another place and time, one could see the story transposed, more or less intact, to Ken Loach’s social-realist renditions of the streets of England. The film’s press material even compares it to Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948) and The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, 2008), although doing so doesn’t necessarily help this intimate independent film, given there is already an entire local history that it nicely fits into.
Premiering in the 2017 Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti sidebar, with its first Australian screening at the 2018 Sydney Film Festival, West of Sunshine is based on Raftopoulos’ short film Father’s Day (2011). The feature follows hapless and feckless package-delivery driver Jim (Damian Hill), who has forgotten he has to take care of his young son, Alex (Ty Perham), that day while also having to deal with an escalating debt to loan shark Banos (Tony Nikolakopoulos). When Jim’s boss, clearly exhausted by his continued unreliability, forbids the young boy from joining Jim and
