“It has been crazy!” Renée Marie Petropoulos exclaims, as she talks about the fairly recent experience of having her short film Tangles and Knots screened in two of the most significant cultural events in the world – the Berlin Film Festival (the Berlinale) and the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas.
“I’d never been to a big festival before and this experience opened my little Australian worldview of cinema,” says Renée.
“I met so many inspiring filmmakers! SXSW was way too much fun, while Berlinale is very different. I felt like a flimmaker for the first time.”
So, how did a 27-year-old filmmaker from Sydney end up in two of the most prestigious cinematic events in the world? Simple: she just applied.
“Right after I finished my MFA in Directing at Columbia University, I applied at all the big festivals,” she remembers, admitting to being surprised to get the first email from Berlinale.
“I felt really great to get that kind of validation.”
In fact, Tangled and Knots, a film about the complex relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter, was developed as her thesis at the prestigious New York university.
“It took two years to get it finished,” Renée says of the process.
“We shot it in Sydney in January 2016 and finished editing in June 2017.”
Dealing with the themes of female sexuality and toxic masculinity, the film is very topical.
“When I started working on it, it was before the whole #MeToo movement, but timing was significant,” she admits.
“I honesty don’t think I know any woman who hasn’t had some sort of experience of harassment or sexual assault,” she says.
“These things have been happening before the Weinstein scandal and are still happening. The difference is that now we have a public forum to explore these issues. For me, it was an exploration of something that I have been feeling strongly about for many many years and I hope that the film contributes to the conversation happening right now.”
The film itself comes from a very personal place for her.
“I wanted to write a very personal film and explore the complicated relationship between a mother and a daughter,” she explains.
“It comes from a very honest place; I based the characters on my own relationship with my mum while I was growing up; our relationship was very intimate, very open, very complex. We would be like girlfriends, sharing things and she helped me open up. My family is the most important part of shaping who I am as a person and a filmmaker.”
And she says that being Greek also played a role.
“I think this openness and honesty in our relationship is definitely Greek,” she says, laughing and talks about her love of her grandparents, who came to Australia from Nafplio, Kalamata, Pylos and Rhodes, and of the stereotypical Greek upbringing.
“Growing up Greek Australian means being asked ‘why aren’t you a lawyer?’, or a doctor, or accountant, but I’m happy to have two sisters with real jobs, which means I’m allowed to be the black sheep of the family,” she jokes.
“Having said that, I truly feel that I’m a Greek Australian filmmaker. I love telling Australian stories, but I’m interested in expanding it and shooting something in Greece. It’s a longtime dream of mine and I hope to make it a reality.”
At the moment, she has a few projects under development, one of which is a dark comedy set in Greece.
“I’d love to film it in Greece,” she says.
As for her main artistic aspiration at the moment, it is very simple.
“I’m 27 years old, so my aspiration is to shoot my first feature film before I’m 30.”
‘Tangles and Knots’ is screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival as part of the ‘Accelerator 1’ program (featuring short films from emerging Australian and New Zealander filmmakers), on Saturday 11 and Sunday 19 August. For more information, visit miff.com.au
Watch the trailer for ‘Tangles and Knots’ here: