Unsaid

Unsaid’ is inspired by events in my childhood. I was a toddler when the Yugoslav war forced my cousins and their family into our small home in Australia. Suddenly, our living room became a bedroom to four people. I couldn’t understand what they’d gone through or what it must have been like to suddenly move to a place that doesn’t speak your language.

It certainly brought its share of conflict. Three languages competed: Serbian, Mandarin and English. I had trouble keeping up and stayed non-verbal longer than most kids. I was still able to pick up on a few things; The grown-ups seemed angry a lot of the time, and sometimes I wasn’t allowed to go into the living room. I wanted to capture this sense of confusion in the film, which is why I didn’t add subtitles to the foreign dialogue. Most of the audience will view the family drama in a similar way as protagonist, ‘Oscar’ experiences it; only getting brief glimpses through body language and tone at what was going on between the family members.

Just as in the film, things got messy in real life. A lot of that is still unresolved in my family today. In a way, I guess ‘Unsaid’ was a way for me to contextualise that time and my place in it. Oscar was able to find a way to transcend language and make a meaningful connection between all his family. While fictional, it speaks to the real love that existed there.