This TV star spent so long making a film in a Sydney funeral home that they put him on staff
Years later, he met one of the funeral directors, Michele Salamone, in a cafe and thought he seemed like 'the John Wayne of Leichhardt'. When the cafe owner asked whether business was good, Salamone deadpanned 'yeah, fridge is full'.
Byers thought the dignified work of an Italian funeral parlour would make a great documentary and, once filming was under way, he was given an unpaid job.
'I think they realised I may never finish the film and they were like 'we've got to get something out of this',' he said.
But doing everything himself – writing, directing, acting, shooting, recording sound, producing and editing – proved challenging.
'It's not a chill thing to make a feature film in a funeral home,' Byers said. 'It's not a chill thing to make a feature film at all, let alone on your own, let alone in a funeral home, let alone for six years, seven years, eight years by the end of it.
'So I just threw everything I had and more at it until it was done. I'm quite glad that I finished it before it finished me.'
Like Sparrow, Byers struggled as he shot during the pandemic after the Black Summer bushfires, running out of money, and going through a break-up and some distressing funerals.
'This film, rather than this beautiful centre point of expression and release in my life, just became this ultimate liability,' he said. 'This terrible decision that I'd made that was not going to solve itself.'
At the premiere, Byers will dispel any funereal vibes by having the film's composer and sound designer, Luke Fuller, bring a boombox to play 'some '80s Italian Bocelli [style music] which I know will please all the Italians in the house'.
The festival, which runs from June 4 to 15, opens with Australian director Michael Shanks' horror film Together, which became controversial when an American production company filed a lawsuit claiming it was a 'blatant rip-off' of a 2023 comic romance - an allegation the Together team's agent called 'frivolous and without merit'.
Festival director Nashen Moodley described Together as probably the most anticipated Australian film of the year. 'It's so smart, it's so funny,' he said. 'Wickedly funny.'
Films from 70 countries will screen in the State Theatre and nine other venues. While stories from exotic locations are always part of the festival's charm, there are Hollywood stars right across the program.
Naomi Watts plays a New York novelist with Bill Murray as her mentor in The Friend, Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon are living underground after the apocalypse in The End, Jodie Foster is a psychiatrist turned investigator in Vie Privee, Jacob Elordi and Daisy Edgar-Jones are gamblers drawn to each other in On Swift Horses, Carey Mulligan plays a musician in The Ballad of Wallis Island and Tom Hiddleston is a mysterious businessman in The Life Of Chuck.
The Iranian thriller that won at Cannes last weekend, Jafar Panahi's It Was Just An Accident, is among 12 films running in the $60,000 competition for 'audacious, courageous and cutting-edge' cinema.
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