Head On

Viewer Advice: Contains high-level sex scenes, depictions of drug use and adult themes.

Alex Dimitriades is magnetic in Ana Kokkinos’s bold and brutal feature about a queer Greek-Australian man’s ecstatic journey to find himself.

Ari (Dimitriades) is 19 and crashing into his future. But as a same-sex-attracted son of Greek immigrants, he doesn’t know what that looks like or where he fits. He’s angry and nihilistic, in conflict with his traditional parents, who want him to settle down; they have no idea that he spends most of his time taking drugs and hooking up. But Ari’s vulnerable, too, wrestling with his sexuality and what it means to be a man. Over a ferocious 24 hours, he journeys around the streets of Melbourne and into his own alienated heart, trying to reconcile it all.

First screening at MIFF in 1998 after its premiere at Cannes, Head On depicts the city at steaming street level – its dark alleyways and pulsing dancefloors, the highs and lows of multicultural life from east to west. Based on Christos Tsiolkas’s explosive 1995 debut novel, Loaded, Kokkinos’s second feature courted controversy on its original release for its graphic violence and sexual content, but went on to be nominated for several AFI Awards (winning Best Editing) and nabbed the AWGIE for Best Adaptation. Featuring a fearless, full-blooded performance from Dimitriades, Head On is energetic, sensory filmmaking – authentic and uncompromising in every way.

“Shocking, confronting and dazzling … An exhilarating piece of filmmaking.” – SBS