Cross Life (2007)

The Kings Cross district in Sydney, Australia is a home to the city's creative non-conformists, but its also a place with more than its share of crime and drugs, and filmmaker Claire McCarthy follows six stories of life in the neighborhood in this independent drama. Trace (Danielle Rohweder) has left her small town for the big city with dreams of stardom as a musician, but she's having a hard time paying her bills with her current job as a barmaid in a strip club. Zana (Imogen Annesley) is a woman in her thirties who had heard her biological clock ticking, and now she and her husband David (Richard Kennett) are eager to have a baby. Joe (Paul Caesar) and Mary (Clareissa Holm) are a pair of homeless drug addicts living in a parking garage; Mary is soon to give birth to a baby, and Joe is desperate to raise the money to take her to a doctor. Rachel (Elaine Hudson) is a physician who can't find a way to repair her fractured relationship with her son. Donald (Mo Imiri) and Kane (Carl Laurie) are a pair of teenage boys who get drunk and decide to take on the town, discovering their differences and insecurities along the way. And Bill (Tony Barry) decides to follow a strange family tradition by taking his son out for his sixteenth birthday so he can lose his virginity to a prostitute. Cross Life received its premiere at the 2007 Sydney Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi