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Alex and Vicki are wild girls, torching hedges, smoking dope and just hanging out, both in and out of school. Allegiance is owed to no one but each other and to a plan of escaping, going to Sydney and finding Alex's mother. But the ground on which you base all your hopes can shift as quickly as schoolyard loyalties and growing up tough in Melbourne's outer western suburban fringe is a journey that can be made by only the brave.
Ana Kokkinos' powerful film is a wrenching portrayal of surviving the snares of family and your own desires in the everyday struggle with a world that seems to have no place for you, or if it does it's no place you want to be. Her honest and authentic vision of the contemporary teen warzone of ragged emotions, sex, boredom, and an all pervading sense of abandonment swims before your eyes in a heat haze of anger and longing. The performances of Elena Mandalis (Alex) and Dora Kaskanis (Vicki) are a revelation, as the two Australian/Greek girls who are walking a tightrope between adolescence and adulthood constantly renegotiating their friendship as it strains to breaking point beneath the weight of their conflicting needs.
Heralding Kokkinos as a new directorial talent (though this was foreshadowed in her acclaimed student film Antamosi), Only the Brave has the measured assurance of a full length feature - with its sharply honed study of character and finely worked narrative structure - yet still maintains the intense impact and incisive clarity of the best that short drama can offer. A powerhouse piece of cinema.