Recently, while browsing through my local video rental store, I came across a rare find … Look Both Ways.

It’s a rare find because it’s a little movie from Australia, directed by Sarah Watt, which combines film with animation and to find it smack dab in the middle of the U.S. is great!

The story begins with Meryl Lee (Justine Clark), who sees eminent danger everywhere … that is, in her animated imagination. While on her way home she is witness to a horrible accident where a man is run over by a train. Enter Nick (William McInnes), a newspaper photographer, who is there to shoot photos for the story and has just found out that he has cancer. The story is mainly driven by these two characters in the basic boy meets girl kind of plot. What’s interesting about the movie is that it’s really about how these two characters and the characters that surround them deal with their fears of death. And for the two main characters those fears are shown in a unique way.

Meryl is an artist so her fears are imagined in painterly animations. The visuals used to show Nick’s fears are a bit different. Being a photographer Nick’s fears are represented by quick montages of images, websites and articles he’s seen. Both techniques were a great way to show their fears to the viewer and really fit into the story well.

I highly recommend going to your local video rental store and checking this out. Support those women filmmakers, there’s way too few of them!