From All Sides

Anoushka is a middle aged, South Asian woman living with her Eurasian husband, Pascal, and their two teenage children. Eldest daughter Nina is a high achieving aspiring dancer, seduced into identifying with whiteness, and in a love triangle with her two best friends who are in the school's elite dance team with her. Pubescent son Clyde is confused about his place as a multiracial young man in Australia and is starting to dabble in delinquency. They live in a neighbourhood full of colourful characters in Campbelltown, in South-Western Sydney. Anoushka is getting it from all sides. She was once a professional Bharatanatyam dancer who made the transition into mainstream contemporary dance but then left soon after, disillusioned. She deliberately downplays her exciting former career to avoid hostility from the other mothers of the girls on her daughter's dance team at school. Her rebellious son's teachers question her parenting style. Her insecure boss can barely contain her condescension. And her own mother-in-law picks fights with her about fabric softener. If only they knew that her and her bisexual husband enjoyed a low-key open relationship.

When Clyde's antisocial behaviour lands him in trouble, Anoushka begins to rethink her strategy of keeping her head below the parapet. Nina approaches Anoushka to assist her with her application for an elite dance company and Anoushka's former career as a professional dancer begins to resurface, catapulting each member of her family into parallel journeys of cultural and sexual awakening, while unearthing a minefield of race relations, class tension and sexuality. Nina, with newfound boldness, makes a move on her friend Thomas, alienating her best friend, Soph. Pascal has a brief affair with a male work colleague but leaves himself open to blackmail when he confronts a white co-worker about her frequent sick days. Anoushka dares challenge her white boss and becomes a target at work.

Anonymous harassing dick pics, and then a threatening letter delivered by hand into their letterbox, throws Anoushka. Her husband worries that the letter poses a credible threat, possibly from the spurned spouse of someone they've enjoyed a sexual relationship with. Anoushka stubbornly refuses to go to the police, convinced the letter was written by a woman, based on her experience of previously working with criminal offenders as a movement therapist. She arranges to meet the author of the text messages to learn who her tormentor is once and for all... "From All Sides" is a bold, unflinching, and incisive portrayal of sexuality, envy, racism, and class tension as experienced by a middle-class brown family. With the provocative and vivacious Anoushka at the centre, this will be a groundbreaking film about the inner lives of women of colour.

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