FILMINK - The Gold Coast Film Festival

by Rhiannon Sawyer One curious addition to this year’s festival is a special screening of actress Kimberley Joseph’s (Cold Feet, Lost, Paradise Beach) first foray into filmmaking with The Polygon. This intriguing documentary charts the fallout from nuclear testing in Kazakhstan and the effect that it has had on communities living near the Semipalatinsk test site. The equivalent of 2,000 Hiroshima bombs were tested at this site over a forty year period, and now the communities are being ravaged by various forms of illness. FILMINK asked Joseph why this story was to be her first step into the world of directing. “It may sound strange, but to a certain extent, I believe this story chose me,” she replies. “I was open to it and the opportunity appeared! I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I want to direct now’; it just happened quite organically.” The atrocious health that these people were left with in the aftermath of nuclear testing inspired Joseph to make this thirteen-minute short, which will screen at the festival and will also serve as a trailer for the feature documentary that she plans on finishing in the near future. It’s a far cry from her current world, on the set of the big budget television drama Lost. It was after a fortuitous meeting on a long distance flight with a member of the EU parliament that Joseph first heard about the plight of the people who live on the Kazakh Steppe. “The acting allows me the freedom to do other things that I’m interested in, and projects that I find truly fulfilling. "The Polygon" is a passion project that I’m able to undertake at the same time as furthering my acting career.”