Made during the COVID-19 pandemic, this film is a play on ‘winner winner, chicken dinner’, a phrase often used by Australians to celebrate personal victory. It reflects on the selfishness that was prevalent in Melbourne as we headed into each lockdown. With panic-buying stripping supermarket aisles bare, even those who wanted to take the moral high ground began to think - if you can’t beat them, do you join them?

Chicken Dinner

Shot within the constraints of Melbourne’s ongoing COVID-19 lockdowns, ‘Leave Your Body’ features the apartment where the filmmaker spent the better part of 2020 and 2021. However, where she sees a prison, her partner Sean sees a sanctuary. To him these five rooms are a fortress, not only protecting them from the virus, but also from the social pressure to interact with strangers. Portraying a fictitious version of himself (as well as the film’s various intruders) he defends his solitude while quietly losing touch with reality. ‘Leave Your Body’ is a celebration of isolation, but also an acknowledgement that the longer confinement continues; the harder it is to rejoin society.