Following a tragedy at sea, the lives of two orphaned refugees and an Australian aid worker are inextricably woven together in this bracing, humanistic drama.

In Athens, just after the devastating 2015 refugee crisis, Tarek and Zaeed fend for themselves on the street. Their parents died during their ocean journey; in a bid for shelter and food, Tarek accepts exploitative sex work and Zaeed takes desperate, risky measures to change their circumstances. Meanwhile, Bobby, a humanitarian worker dealing with her own painful past, is trying to offload bags of illegally harvested shellfish before she returns to Australia.

An astute and touching examination of statelessness, trauma and time, Voices in Deep is the second feature from Jason Raftopoulos, whose Venice-premiering debut West of Sunshine (MIFF 2018) first demonstrated his social-realist directorial eye. In this equally confronting yet compassionate follow-up – informed by his own Greek-Cypriot family’s experiences of migration – he arranges a stellar cast of Australian and Greek actors, including Yorgos Lanthimos regular Angeliki Papoulia (Dogtooth, MIFF 2009; The Lobster), to once again shine a light on lives relegated to the shadows.

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Director Jason Raftopoulos will be in attendance for the screenings on Wednesday 16 and Thursday 17 August. He will also appear in the free MIFF Talks event Power Shift: The Future of Seeing on Tuesday 15 August.