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Counting Cards with My Father

A misfit teen looks for their poker-playing father with hopes of escaping residential care.

synopsis

Australia, 2007. Introverted tomboy Lisa Wu (15, she/they) has just moved into residential care aka “resi” — a home for those who are no longer fit for foster care. There, they meet Morgan (21, she/they), a nightclub hostess and aspiring DJ. Morgan attempts to befriend Lisa, but Lisa has a higher purpose: to find their estranged father Sammy (59, he/him). For the past year, Lisa has been honing their poker skills and stalking Sammy’s online poker profile, where they can see his casino visits and his winnings. They approach him after his winning streak at the Crown, but Sammy rejects their offer to connect as soon as he realises who they are. Dejected, Lisa allows Morgan to transform Lisa into a femme and soon gets a job as a shot girl at Morgan’s nightclub. To celebrate, Lisa gets a dragon tattoo and posts their feminized photo on Facebook. As Lisa begins to develop independence, Sammy arrives on their doorstep in a cowboy hat. Morgan smells heartbreak, but Lisa falls further in love with the idea of having a dad — the promise of becoming a real family seems close, especially when it seems like they might have a shot at winning the upcoming poker tournament by working as a team. Ultimately, however, Lisa must learn that winning comes down to knowing when to walk away.

Director’statement

Counting Cards with My Father is a coming-of-age film inspired by my time living between foster care, friend’s homes, and a guardian home where I had a roommate five years my senior who brought me into the shady working world of nightlife. It combines this experience with my search for my biological father, who leaves an online presence in his poker profile of when and where he last played. In Australia, you “lose money faster than anywhere else in the world” — and the hardest hit in the gambling epidemic are Chinese Australians. The film is a way to shine a light on this, but also to explore with empathy the father I haven’t seen since I was eight years old, whilst also representing the underrepresented residential care system (from its young residents to its overstretched workers). Visually I’m inspired by the work of Greg Girard and will use contrasts of colour to juxtapose environments in Lisa’s world. The film will be subjective and nostalgic, gritty, and saturated, raw yet romantic, with music as a way to access the interiority of characters who rarely mean what they say.

TFL PROGRAMME:
ScriptLab 2023

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