On a mysterious dirt road in the harsh yet beautiful Australian outback, Ned Williams (Lee Priest), a beast with a dark side, is trying to escape authority and Constable Rose (Danny Bolt), a true blue honest bloke, is trying to get out of the desert without being shot, run over… or eaten.
Five Fun Facts about Round Trip:
1. The stunts are by Judd Wild from Mad Max Fury Road.
2. The Writer/Director and the DOP are both women.
3. Ned is played by Lee Priest, one of Australia’s most successful and controversial bodybuilders.
4. Darren Narul gave us the sounds of the bush on the soundtrack, for example, the fight scene is backed by the sounds of dingos’ fighting on the didgeridoo.
5. The police car was a $500 bucket of bolts we stickered up at the location on a sheep farm in the Flinders Ranges, and it’s still there!
Ren is an accomplished commercial VR Director and Sculpture Artist but her passion is making films. Since studying at Raindance Film School in London and graduating from New York Film Academy in Sydney 2014, her short films have won a swag of awards including Best Australian Film at the Sydney Indie Film Festival, Event Cinemas for her film ‘The Skydiver & The Scarecrow’ in 2017. Her unusual trademark of a crocodile, always creatively worked into the story or art direction of her films is a nod to her foster family in Darwin.
The goal was the wrap this story in the colours and textures of the Australian outback, the distinct and beautiful sounds of the didgeridoo and make an Aussie action film about a cop and a modern-day bushranger stained with sunburnt red dirt.