Soles
2026 · 15m · Australia
Directed by Kalani Gacon
Genres: drama
Tones: melancholic, tender
In the Blue Mountains town of Katoomba, two friends attempt to use a local myth that throwing shoes over powerlines as a train passes grants wishes that bend time and space to hold onto each other before one of them moves away.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Gacon turns a grassroots youth-mentorship production into something formally assured — the shoe-throwing ritual gives the film a concrete, place-specific visual grammar for abstract adolescent longing, and the Blue Mountains location does real atmospheric work.
Shoes on powerlines as time-bending wish ritual in Katoomba — hyperlocal folk mythology, two teens, departure looming. That's an actual premise, not a logline. Cautious optimism here.
Gacon grounds magical thinking in hyperlocal Katoomba geography — shoes on powerlines synced to a passing train as the adolescent grief device. Mentorship-program origins are visible but the specificity carries it.