Info
Logline
BOYS IN THE TREES
Corey and Jonah used to be friends. In high school, Corey joins a gang of skate rats and wants to be a photographer, while Jonah is an outside who’s being bullied by the skaters and their leader Jango. The two old friends meet on Halloween 1997 as seniors, and wind up talking like in old times on their way home. They reminisce and tell each other ghost stories until the boundaries of fact and fiction, reality and nightmare, past and present dissolve in Nicholas Verso’s powerful debut.
Meet the director
Nicholas Verso
Nicholas Verso began directing Super 8 music videos for musicians including Wendy Rule, Kerri Simpson, Beki & The Bullets and The Cat Empire. His short films include HUGO (Grand Prize for Fantasy at Rhode Island), three APOCALYPSE BEAR webisodes (funded by the City of Melbourne), FLIGHT (a Tropfest finalist) and most recently, THE LAST TIME I SAW RICHARD (Best Short Film at the 2014 AACTA Awards and Best Emerging Filmmaker at Melbourne Queer Film Festival). His TV work includes Emmy award-winning NOWHERE BOYS and children’s sitcom SNAKE TALES (ATOM award for Best Children’s Programme and Gold Remi Award at Worldfest Houston). Attended Berlinale Talent Campus with mentoring from Tilda Swinton, Janusz Kaminski and Willem Dafoe. Won the 2013 Inscription LA Residency and was awarded an Asialink Arts Fellowship to Beijing in 2015. Works as AV Designer for theatre, designing shows for Melbourne International Festival, St. Martin’s Youth Theatre, Melbourne University, Malthouse Theatre and the National Institute of Circus Arts. Designed artworks with Hermione Merry as one half of installation art duo MerryVerso and worked with delinquent boys to create “Nocturne: Forgotten”, a multiform work incorporating an 18 speaker sound wall, video projections and experiential installation. Performing as DJ Versey Verse, he started one of Melbourne’s most popular Friday nights on Brunswick St. His feature debut screenplay BOYS IN THE TREES won the NewDraft Award at NewFest 2011, and was nominated for the Monte Miller AWGIE Award. It premiered at Venice in September 2016.