Judge's comments:

A really interesting take on what are usually very confronting commercials. The idea of self driving cars helping us gently get home juxtaposed with today's car technology created a uniquely relaxing yet unsettling cinematic experience.

Description:

Australia is big. The long road journeys Australians take to visit friends and family at times like Christmas and Easter mean driver fatigue is a constant threat to driver safety. And rises in Australia’s road toll around these periods are sobering reminders of the risks of driving when tired. Covid 19 and the Bush Fires may have grabbed the headlines, but in 2020, Australia’s roads still claimed more lives.

The data tells us people have become immune to crash scenes in road safety ads, so let’s not do that, let’s make a film where the driver does the unforgivable, falls asleep with her children in the back seat, then doesn’t crash but instead enters a magical, utopian future world where no one crashes and cars drive themselves.

This cautionary tale is a dreamlike vision of the quintessential road trip. We’re taken on a magical journey into the near future with one foot still in the present. We follow a mother and her two daughters driving along the Australian highways at night. Before long, with the girls asleep in the back, mum too drifts into peaceful slumber. The unnerving scene of a driver asleep at the wheel is heightened by an oncoming truck but the resulting collision we’re conditioned to expect doesn’t occur. Instead, a near missis is the pivotal moment which transports us into a familiar-looking analogue world, but one populated with self-driving cars. Their peaceful road trip continues as the family’s car threads its way across bridges, intersections and spaghetti junctions, before delivering the family safely into the arms of grandma. Titles at the end ask that until all our cars can drive themselves, drive safe.