Alex Dimitriades delivers a scorching lead performance in Ana Kokkinos’s compelling debut feature Head On, based on the novel Loaded by Christos Tsiolkas. Greek-Australian Ari (Dimitriades) is nineteen years old, unemployed and lacking direction. The film follows 24 chaotic hours in his life, grappling with hiding his sexuality from his traditional Greek family and seeking out drug and booze fuelled anonymous sexual encounters.

An explosive portrait of a young man struggling to reconcile the clashing parts of himself, Head On tackles some thorny issues of diaspora and queer identity subsumed into the homogeneity of the Australian suburbs. This film is at its most thrilling when Dimitriades' angry, venomous Ari is cruising around Melbourne's nightclubs with his trans friend Toula (a mesmerising Paul Capsis), each of them outcasts on the precarious fringe of society.