Funkytown

Paul Kennedy's Funkytown is the vivid true story of a year in the life of a teenager leaping into manhood. It is 1993: a serial killer is loose on the streets of Frankston, Victoria. The community is paralysed by fear, and a state's police force and national media come to find a killer. Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Paul Kennedy is searching for something else entirely. He is focused on finishing school, getting drafted into the AFL and falling in love. So much can change in a year.

The rites of passage for many Australian teenage boys—blackout drinking, simmering violence and emotional suppression—take their toll, and the year that starts with so much promise ends with Kennedy expelled, arrested and undrafted. But one teacher sees Kennedy self-destructing and becomes determined to set him on another path.

Told with poignancy, humour and evoking the brilliant, dusty haze of late Australian summer, Funkytown is a love letter to adolescence, football, family, and outer suburbia.