Fiona Hardingham, Producer 

Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2023, Film Independent, Producing Lab

Project Type: Feature 

Genre: Drama

Length: 90 minutes

Field of Science: Climate Change, Wildfires, Environmental Displacement

Stage: Development 

Synopsis: 

In rural New South Wales, Mikey (14) roams her family’s farm with her little sister Layla (8). The family keep bees, raise chickens, work the land.

On a scorched summer day, the air is thick with smoke and stillness. Mikey watches the bees move strangely, the chickens unsettled. The stillness feels wrong. Her father, Jay (50), insists the fire won’t reach them. Her mother, Izzie (40), tries to hide her worry. But the land is warning them.

That night, a red sky breaks open. The family flee through a tunnel of flames, past burning houses, fallen trees, and dying animals. Mikey doesn’t have time to find her treasured locket, but she does find fear — in her mother’s eyes, in her father’s panic, in the choking air. They escape by boat, soot-covered and silent, into an unknown future.

The evacuation centre is disorienting. Everything smells like smoke. Her feet are burnt, Layla cries for a lost toy, and her parents are quietly tearing apart. Mikey listens as adults argue over aid, funding, and blame. But all she feels is displacement — from home, from school, from her sense of self. When the rain finally comes they return to what’s left of their home. The devastation is total: the house is gone. The bees are dead. Her father weeps — a sight Mikey has never seen.

Mikey longs for her old life but faces a harder challenge—discovering who she is in this altered world. At school, she’s adrift—behind, isolated, embarrassed by hand-me-downs and an oversized donated blazer. At home, her parents splinter under their losses. When solar companies approach, Izzie sees opportunity while Jay resists, fearing for his bees and traditions. Silently, Mikey witnesses it all—collapsing certainties, pressing change, and her parents’ growing divide.

In the cracks, new connections emerge. Mikey meets Lewy (15)—thoughtful and observant. Together they explore hidden places in nature. He’s openly queer but unassuming. With him, Mikey finds lightness and acceptance without explanation.

Jay brings home new beehives, hoping to rebuild a colony. He and Mikey find rhythm working silently in the shed. Their focus shifts from rebuilding the house to tending the hives—slow, methodical work that creates a wordless understanding between them. Not fixed, but held.

For a moment, it feels like they might be rebuilding something more than just hives. But the hope is fragile. At a country fair, everything boils over — a violent fight between Jay and Travis erupts in front of everyone. It’s raw and humiliating. Afterwards, back at home, Mikey overhears her parents arguing and learns the truth: the hives were stolen. The betrayal cuts deep. Jay moves out, and Izzie — worn down by the weight of it all — tells Mikey, who doesn’t take it well. Mikey is left with too much to hold.

At school, everything boils over. Mikey snaps at a teacher over missed homework and is sent to the welfare office. Mrs Onai offers support, but the problems are clear — Mikey is behind, overwhelmed, and held back by not having internet at home since the fire.

Needing space, she retreats to Lewy. At the beach, in the quiet of his Nan’s house, their friendship deepens. They talk about family, absence, and the weight of things that never get said. In the spaces where adults fail, they find each other.

Lewy opens up about his mother’s mental illness. They speak in half-sentences, in music, in looks. When he returns her scorched locket—now repaired—it becomes the first thing from the fire made whole again.

After spending time with Lewy, hearing about his mother, and seeing the quiet strength it takes to let go, something in Mikey shifts. She returns home a little softer, less guarded. And when she finds the denim shorts her mum has mended and left folded on her bed, it’s like a thread is stitched back between them.

On a weekend visit with Jay, Mikey holds boundaries. She won’t fix him, she can’t be his therapist. But there’s no cruelty in it — just a kind of growing-up.

The family begins to adapt. Solar panels go up. And Mikey feels like she can finally breathe.

In the final moments, Mikey harvests honey from a wild hive with Layla beside her. No gloves. No face covering. Her movements are calm, grounded. Her connection to the bees — and to the land — is one of trust. It’s clear Mikey has found something through all the loss: resilience, connection, and the beginnings of her own self.