Maribyrnong filmmaker Stephen Packer is one of 15 finalists at Tropfest, the world’s largest short film festival, which returns for the first time since 2019 this weekend in Sydney.
Packer’s six-minute short film, ‘Unprompted’ will be screened before thousands at Centennial Park on Sunday 22 February as well as being streamed live around the world on YouTube.
First prize is $50,000 while second and third get $30,000 and $20,000 respectively, but Packer said just being a finalist in Tropfest at his first time of entering was a success in itself.
“Oh man I’m over the moon,” Packer said.
“It feels like the eyes of the Australian filmmaking community will be on Tropfest.”
Which is all rather ironic given Unprompted is based on a struggling screenwriter, though while Packer said he could relate to his film’s main character, there were some big differences.
“My film is about a struggling screen writer who when he hits a brick wall creatively he turns to AI to help him write his horror film only to find that he writes him in as a victim,” he said of Unprompted which was shot entirely in his study over two nights in December last year.
Along with the struggling filmmaker part, Packer said he also had a close affinity with the film’s other main theme: AI.
“I moved to Silicon Valley as a small child because my dad worked in software engineering and that’s the heart of the AI revolution and something that affected his work as well.”
Details: https://www.tropfest.com/finalist
