Two broken people – a Lao-Australian woman and a teenage hitchhiker – must navigate grief, isolation and an unlikely connection forged over one night in a roadside motel.

Director’s Vision for ‘Broken Line North’

BROKEN LINE NORTH finds Lia at the moment in which she learns of her estranged mother’s death and follows her for a single night as she grapples with her grief and picks up a teenage hitchhiker.

I’m interested in the connections between grief and fear, isolation and the instinctual need to connect – even with a stranger for just one night. The film charts a series of choices as Lia and Julian each decide to put their trust in each other. It’s a dance of loneliness, fear, and warmth in brief moments of shared connection.

There is something of an inversion between Lia and Julian – he is travelling away from his mother in search of his father and a better future, while Lia is heading towards her past and a mother – and a lineage – which no longer physically exists. In their encounter, we see Lia mothering a boy who doesn’t really know what it is to have a caring mother, while she struggles to come to terms with her own loss.

The film also explores the spiritual way in which people search for meaning following the death of a loved one. With small moments of bizarreness, it’s likely that Lia will look back on this night in years to come and wonder if Julian ever really existed, or if perhaps it was the spirit of her mother at play.

Fundamentally, BROKEN LINE NORTH is a story about two broken people, both travelling in the same direction, who briefly find solace in each other. I hope it’s a story that many will relate to.