01: Downriver

Eight years ago, a boy drowned in a river at a caravan park. James, then ten, was the one who took the blame.

Now a young man, paroled from juvenile detention, James returns to the scene. He wants to find the body that was never recovered, return it to a grieving mother, and prove that the story that defined his life was constructed by others.

But the caravan park keeps its secrets. Old bullies still circle. Anthony, the childhood friend whose account sent him away, has his own reasons for silence. And Damien, a young man staying nearby, becomes sexually involved with both of them, tying the two together in ways neither will fully explain. In a place where intimacy and betrayal are hard to tell apart, everyone is protecting something.

Scicluna’s debut is a moody, slow-burning mystery in the tradition of WINTER’S BONE and TOP OF THE LAKE. Beneath its sleepy rural surface runs a current of abuse, blackmail and desire, and its gay relationships are woven into that web rather than set apart as an issue. Layered with flashbacks and anchored by a breakout performance from Reef Ireland, alongside Kerry Fox, Helen Morse and Robert Taylor, DOWNRIVER asks how far you’ll go to reclaim a stolen past, and what you’ll find when the water gives it back.