For the Dear Leader is a short film based on the Pong Su incident of 2003, where North Koreans attempted to smuggle heroin into Australia from a Cargo ship known as Pong Su.The location they chose to dock the smaller rubber boat filled with heroin was Boggaley Creek, which is off the Great Ocean Road and is notorious for having rough rocky shores with high tides. One of the smugglers drowned and washed up on shore along with the heroin scattered around the area. It is set during the early hours of the morning following these events when the protagonist, Craig, discovers the drugs and corpse. I came up with the idea after watching news reports about the incident. In a statement, a federal law enforcement officer said that they weren’t able to gather the heroin whilst making a remark in jest that there may be a few more Mustangs driving around the coast due to the drugs being distributed amongst the locals. I found the concept of a naive local discovering illicit narcotics and attempting to sell it would make a good premise for a story.

The film is essentially a story about morals, the story will not simply paint the narrow view of drugs as bad, but instead look at the wider implications of what something with a lot of value can do to people. Thematically the film deals with Greed, love, and fate. It’s a tense thriller with comedic and dramatic moments, which I feel captures the absurdity of life. Making a film, if you’re fair dinkum about it, is a massive commitment. For the Dear Leader was my 2024. I worked two jobs early in the year—one at a chicken coop factory by day, and at a bar by night—while taking pre-production meetings on my breaks. It nearly drove me insane, but it was a kind of good insanity. I knew I had a goal and I was going to achieve it or die trying. I remember looking at myself in the mirror, not unlike ‘Craig’ in the film, weighing my next move while listening to the same Charles Bukowski poem, “Go All the Way,” with weird inspirational music on YouTube. I suppose the film is a collection of the thoughts and feelings I had at the time while writing it. It’s a dark film, and during that period, I was going through a particularly rough breakup. Looking at For the Dear Leader now, I see it as a chapter in my life that I’m glad is over. But that’s just me—there’s enough there for people to make their own interpretations from the themes presented.