Arka features in Australian anthology ‘Here Out West’

Bangladeshi descendent Arka Das has acted and written one of the stories of the anthology feature film ‘Here Out West’ directed by Lucy Gaffy, Fadia Abboud, Leah Purcell, Ana Kokkinos and Julie Kalceff.

The film features eight different stories on the life of immigrants from different countries.

Arka Das has shared his experience of working in this film and writing the chapter ‘Brotherhood’ in a video posted from the official page of the film on Facebook.

“In this chapter ‘Brotherhood’ I play the character named Robi. We shot this chapter of this film in the location where I grew up in high school. The character of this chapter Rashid and Dino are actually inspired by some real-life childhood friends that I had growing up. I have tried to capture the strong friendship of Robi, Rashid and Dino despite being from different countries,” he said.

The Western Sydney-set film is written by Nisrine Amine, Bina Bhattacharya, Matias Bolla, Claire Cao, Arka Das, Dee Dogan, Vonne Patiag and Tien Tran.

‘Here Out West’ is more diversified than most films because of its geographical setting, capturing people from many origins and including people from nine languages: English, Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Kurdish, Tagalog, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Spanish.

This film has eight chapters to cover in 101 minutes, which inevitably cuts stories short and clips performances.

“There is an admirable tenderness in the way the various directors and screenwriters find the humanity in their characters quickly, probing them for attitudes, emotions and worldviews. It is no surprise that the stories based in and around the hospital work particularly well, given hospitals are obviously associated with drama: the place where most of us are born, many of us die, and where we are drawn to in times of sickness”, The Guardian reviewed the film.

Arka has been performing on theatre and television in Australia for almost a decade. Apart from theatre and television, he has acted in movies including, ‘Lion’ and ‘Mulan’.

The film has been co-sponsored by ABC Australia, Screen Australia and Screen New South Wales.‘Here Out West’ will be released in theatres in Australia on February 3.