Look Both Ways

In her "deliriously inventive" (New York Magazine) live action feature debut Look Both Ways, award winning Australian animator Sarah Watt explores the timeless frontiers of love, life, death, and imagination with humor, originality, and honesty.

Meryl (Justine Clarke), a lonely artist, literally envisions disaster around every corner. Through "bursts of painterly, jewel-toned animation," (The New York Times) Meryl's whimsically mordant daydream shark attacks, train wrecks and bridge collapses follow her everywhere. Nick (William McInnes) is a photojournalist whose work keeps him emotionally distanced from the tragedies he documents. When Meryl and Nick meet in the aftermath of a real train accident, their lives, and the lives of a handful of other witnesses and victims, are revealed and transformed. "Maybe the right thing happens," Meryl wonders aloud. Meryl and Nick's mutual attraction places them at the center of a brightly colored, multi-plotted human tapestry that "weaves together thoughts of death the way Crash wove together thoughts of racism." (Roger Ebert) As ripples of fate, coincidence, regret, and desire link stranger to stranger, everyone becomes a survivor.

Look Both Ways is both a contemporary romantic comedy and a "wonderfully, unpretentiously smart" (Elle) examination of life's limits, risks, and mysteries. Winner of multiple Australian Film Institute awards, this perceptive yet slyly entertaining film hails the arrival of "an original and important talent." (Roger Ebert) Sarah Watt's Look Both Ways gently peels back the layers of fear, courage and hope that define and unite us all.