Newcastle is a city in New South Wales, Australia, an industrial port town where immense ships line the horizon, waiting to be loaded up with tons of coal to be shipped all over the world. Newcastle is also home to incredible beaches that offer excellent surf breaks and an annual surfing competition that many of the locals see as their shot at fame and glory and making it out of the grimy reality of working on the drydock coal barges. Seventeeen year old Jesse is a talented surfer who resolves to use that competition as his escape from a future that involves joining his father and his older brother Victor on those barges.

Victor had his own shot at escape, but an untimely accident cut short his promising pro surfing career, leaving him angry and bitter and severely straining his relationship with his younger brother. Jesse feels trapped in Victor’s shadow and resolves to get out from it by succeeding where Victor failed. He pins his hopes on winning the surf trials that will get him a slot in the major contest but is crushed by disqualification. His happy-go-lucky mates talk him into taking a weekend surf trip with them, luring him into coming by inviting along the girl on whom Jesse has his eye. To Jesse’s dismay, they also invite along his twin brother Fergus who, with his dyed hair, dark clothing, black fingernail polish and eyeliner, is most decidedly not one of the boys, no matter how much he longs to fit in.

At night around the campfire the friends fuss and fight but Jesse gets his shot at first love and in the morning, much to Jesse’s mixed amusement and dismay, Fergus gets his shot at fitting in thanks to the efforts of local golden boy Andy, the only one of the bunch who has no problem accepting Fergus just the way he is. The boys enjoy the waves until Victor and his friends show up and try to claim the break for themselves. A battle for supremacy on the water leads to a horrible tragedy that sends Jesse reeling; in the aftermath, he must struggle to decide just who he really is and what he really wants from life.

Newcastle is a striking film with excellent cinematography that takes advantage of the stunning natural loveliness of the area; though the port is filled with hulking industrial structures, it is also a place of bright, beautiful sky, sand and water. (When Jesse complains that Newcastle is a shithole, his grandfather motions at the beach around them and suggests that Jesse has a strange idea of what makes a shithole.) The surfing sequences are breathtaking, capturing the true feeling of being out on the waves and the glimpses of the star-filled night sky are amazing. Newcastle is more than just a visual treat, though; it’s true strength in its compelling story filled with strong characters whose complicated bonds might bend and twist but never entirely break. The relationships Jesse has with his brothers, his mother, father and grandfather, his friends and his first love are well-played and meaningful, sometimes charming, sometimes touching, sometimes tragic, but always very real.

Lachlan Buchanan, starring in his first feature film, imbues Jesse with a depth of character that keeps him interesting and understandable; Reshad Strik as Victor and Xavier Samuels as Fergus give their characters rich life, too, and the interactions between all three are completely convincing, allowing them to present a look at brotherhood that is honest and emotional. Writer/director Dan Castle has done an excellent job with his writing and his cast, even the characters with the briefest of appearances have a feeling of trueness to them. Newcastle is a dynamic and rewarding film, well worth the viewing.

Newcastle screens Sunday, June 1 at 1:30 pm at the Egyptian Theater.

Before the first screening on May 31, I spoke with writer/director Dan Castle and actors Lachlan Buchanan and Reshad Strik; follow the jump for more.

Writer/director Dan Castle, actor Reshad Strik, actor Lachlan Buchanan at their post-screening Q&A. Photo by Mark Zimmerman.

Dan Castle was inspired to write Newcastle by a trip he took to the area back in 2001. He was impressed by the discovery that this working class industrial town known for the exportation of coal also happened to have some of the most idyllic surf beaches in the world. As he walked around the town he saw the photographic possibilities and was inspired to envision a story about a kid dreaming of escaping the town through surfing.

Once his story was written, Castle determined tht all the key characters had to be actors who were also surfers. He didn’t want any actors who weren’t surfers because he wanted to ensure that the characters were played by people who truly understood their mindset and the emotional relationships that surfers have to water and earth.

Reshad Strik got a copy of the Newcastle script from his agent in Los Angeles and knew he had to have a part. “I grew up an hour outside of Newcastle,” he says. “I knew the world, I knew the characters. I told my agent, ‘You gotta get me into this!’”

Lachlan Buchanan found Castle through an online casting call; he, too, was determined to get a role in the film because of the emotional resonance he found in the story. “It’s so different,” he says. “Australia doesn’t often come up with something that real, so interesting, and so challenging.”

After casting was complete, Castle met with his actors in pre-production to work on their character’s backstories and development through a series of workshops. He wanted his cast to have a throrough feeling for their characters as whole personalities, not just “types”: “When developing it, I determined that it was not going to be a commentary, just a straightforward drama with no affect.”

The challenge in telling this story was in getting all of the details just right, Castle said, pointing out that Americans don’t generally go to Australia to tell an Australian story, usually seeing the country simply as a backdrop for the sake of its scenery. He was determined to tell this story from the point of view of the people who live it. He did encounter some difficulties along the way–there was a definite culture clash due to differences in life approach. While working with the local filmmaking organizations, he found that things that made perfect sense to him didn’t make any sense at all to the Australians. During the development of the film he encountered a lot of surprise that he would want to film in unglamorous Newcastle in the first place, but Castle was sure the story he wanted to be told couldn’t be told somewhere else.

“It’s a working class surf town,” he says. “We’ve lost the individualism of towns,” he adds, explaining why he rejected a closer to home solution of filming on the California coast. “Newcastle is its own reality, it is unique. I wanted the environment of the town to be a character in the film.”

Castle’s insistence on keeping his story true to reality was important to his actors as well. Strik, who says about the film’s characters: “I know that guy!” says alsom “Newcastle for me–I definitely think the surfing comunity and kids in general will like the film and identify with it.” Strik says that the characters in the film and the stories that they carry have a resonance for him because that’s the world from which he comes but thinks the film is appealing to a much larger audience as well.

Buchanan is proud of his work in Newcastle and has high hopes for the film. “I think it will surprise a lot of people, it has a lot of frank depictions. Hopefully, it’ll set a standard for Australian films.”