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The only person in the world

Threat advisory: Guarded - General risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

A bitter-sweet tale of first love well and truly lost.

Screens with Italian for beginners (Italiensk for begyndere).

Persons of interest

  • Hamish Michael .... Damien
  • Claudia Buttazoni .... Sarah
  • Brian Lipson .... Doctor Grant
  • Tom Callaghan .... Rick
  • Ben Chessell .... Screenwriter
  • Ben Chessell .... Director

Cinematic intelligence sources

  • Awards and film festivals:
    • Sydney Film Festival/Dendy Awards for Australian short films 2002: Finalist
    • Munich Film Festival 2002: Screening
  • Studios and distributors:

Intelligence analyst

Special Agent Matti

Theatrical report

Er, someone let loose with a camera, recording one of life's hard knocks.

The only person in the world has a strong biographical flavour to it but lifts that bit of reality out of everyday life and puts it into a world of film student finals. There is an element of showing off in the number of genres/styles Ben Chessell uses in his 13 minutes of fame, showing off that he has learned the essentials of his course and can put them into practice. This distracts your attention from a story that has very little time to be told.

Said story, in fact, is not big enough to fill the time it is given. A short film, like a short story, is storytelling reduced to the bare necessities. It should give you just enough and no more. The only person in the world gives you more than you need to know. That tells you that the idea should be a feature and not a short.

Meanwhile, the content is rather plain. Losing the love of your life is a deeply dramatic and tragically traumatic event but this film captures little of that. You're better off watching Channel 10's The life of us.

Security censorship classification

M (Low level coarse language, sexual references)

Surveillance time

13 minutes (0:13 hours)

Not for public release in Australia before date

Film: 20 June 2002 - Melbourne, Sydney

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