Name: My Year Without Sex
Director: Sarah Watt
Released: 2009
Duration: 96 min

Watt’s warm and keenly funny follow-up to Look Both Ways offers a portal into a suburban Aussie family home rocked by a health crisis.

Natalie (Sacha Horler, Body Blow, MIFF 2026) and Ross (Matt Day, Underbelly) haven’t let parenthood unduly interrupt their sex lives … but a brain aneurysm is a different story. When a worse-for-wear Natalie wakes up in the hospital, she discovers that a lot of activities, not just coitus, are going to be off the table for a bit. Chronicling the lives of the members of this loving, casually chaotic household in the Melbourne ’burbs, My Year Without Sex unfolds as a series of 12 endearingly offbeat episodes – one for each month of Natalie’s recovery year.

Writer/director Sarah Watt was already an accomplished animator when she made her award-winning live-action debut Look Both Ways in 2005. Her sophomore feature extends that film’s fascination with the tragedy and humour of serious illness, and would have been the second in a proposed trilogy if Watt herself had not tragically passed away from cancer in 2011 without completing another film. Her swan song evinces a distinctive, seasoned talent taken much too soon.

“It was clear from Look Both Ways that Watt was an original talent. It’s clearer now that she’s an exceptional talent. Her ability to write complex comedy about complex characters is uncommon in Australian cinema.” – The Sydney Morning Herald

Script editor Barbara Masel is a guest of the festival and will be in attendance at the Tuesday 18 August session of the film.