West

Set in Sydney 's western suburbs, West is a powerful drama that charts the intense friendship between cousins Pete (Khan Chittenden), a dreamer, and Gerry (Nathan Phillips), a pragmatist. Faced with limited choices and no easy way out, fuelled by booze and drugs, they lead lives punctuated with intermittent violence, petty crime and careless sex. This knife-edge existence threatens to implode when Pete gets a beating on Gerry's behalf and they both fall for the same girl -- one who, it seems, will get the better of both of them. Misplaced loyalty, street justice and the breakdown of family and social support are tackled head-on in writer-director Daniel Krige's gutsy, uncompromising film. Krige wrote the first draft of the script when he was only 16 years old.