Eighteen
Capturing the complexities of teenage life
Directed by Lucy Knox
Directed by Lucy Knox, Eighteen is filmed over one Australian summer and captures the transitional moment between high school and adulthood. Something we all experience, but don’t ever quite know how to navigate. Commissioned by Trust, the documentary offers an intimate snapshot of how it is for eighteen-year-olds today, grappling with identity, social media, climate anxiety, and the weight of an unpredictable future.
“I wanted a project that forced me to be finding and creating the story, in the moment, on my feet,” Lucy says. After working on some commercials with a lot of pre-visualisation, Eighteen offered her a creative departure, a chance to strip back control and instead respond in real time.
Inspired by her cousin’s birthday and the conversations it sparked, the project became a deeply personal attempt to understand how the accelerated complexities of the modern world have reshaped what it means to grow up.
EIGHTEEN authentically captures the emotional space between high school and adulthood. What drew you to this transitional period, and why did you set out to document it?
At the end of last year I went to my cousin's eighteenth birthday, and talking to his friends made me realise this generation faces such a different world than I did at eighteen. It feels like the world has accelerated so rapidly in their lifetime, I guess the most obvious change being the omnipresence of social media. When I was their age, that was still early days. We only used it for communication, where today it’s basically part of how identity is formed and performed. Unlike other generations, this younger generation hasn't had adolescence without the internet. So I wanted to create a kind of time capsule of this moment - a documentary that captures what it means to be eighteen, at this moment in time.
The film balances personal reflections with broader cultural concerns like climate change and technology. How did you navigate that tension between the internal and external pressures these young people face?
What feels so particular to that age is how deeply everything is felt - friendships, relationships - every small moment can feel high stakes or “ life-defining”. That intensity is inherently cinematic.
At the same time I think young people today are very aware of the broader context of the world they’re living in - and the world they’re inheriting. So there’s definitely that push-pull there, which I guess feels like the essence of stepping into adulthood - learning to hold both the personal with the broader global understanding of your place in the world - at once.
That tension really emerged in the structure of the edit too. Earlier edits I think leaned a bit heavily on the personal. It was a fine balance to strike, that required looking at the edit a few different ways, until we felt we got that balance right – where the work hopefully feels simultaneously subjective, and universal.
There’s a strong sense that everyone is carrying something - the quiet pressure of being the 'main character' in your own life. How did you encourage honesty and vulnerability during the interviews and shoots?
I hadn’t thought about it like that, but that feels accurate!
Encouraging openness for me is about giving the people whose story you’re telling agency in the process. From the moment we start, there’s always an understanding with the people we’re interviewing, that they can retract something, or request for certain things not to be included, at any point in the process. Their involvement doesn’t stop once the interview finishes recording. Once the film is being edited, they’re invited in to see how their story has been shaped – so if something feels out of step or inauthentic, they can voice that and we can remove it or reshape it. That can be scary as a director - we’re typically control freaks - but I think it’s good to be pushed to constantly question the work. This isn’t fiction; it’s their real life. They should have agency in how their story is told.
“I wanted to create a kind of time capsule of this moment - a documentary that captures what it means to be eighteen, at this moment in time.”
How did you think about using sound to support the emotional undercurrents of the film, especially around themes like loneliness and uncertainty?
Mate at IXYXI led the composition, and I love working with them because we start with concepts, not references. We spoke about how the score needed to mirror the film’s themes and the ambiguity of this age. That landed us on talking about how the music should feel like ‘a question mark’ - unresolved and with possibility.
So Mate created these tones that almost promise a “real” soundtrack, but then it “hits a wall” and disappears, and never resolves. We can feel the notes in the cello “trying to become” a note, as they go in and out of being able to sustain a frequency. This is my third project with IXYXI, and it’s always funny to be on different sides of the world and work closely but have never met in real life - but I really value their collaboration.
The visuals are stunning, but never feel overly stylised. How did you and your team approach cinematography to reflect the immediacy of this moment in the subjects’ lives?
That’s a great compliment because that’s how we wanted it to feel. There are scenes - like the scene at the river that we let unfold naturally - that are more true verité terrain. And then other specific moments that are obviously more composed, where we could push the visuals slightly to evoke something of their internal world.
I’ve worked with DOP Max Walter a lot, and we really wanted to bring a narrative eye to those moments that themselves were as uncomposed and real as possible. We’d discuss framing styles beforehand - so when a very natural moment arose, we could let it flow and respond within a visual structure we’d already set. That way we weren’t interrupting - we can let them keep talking, keep recording sound, but we can move the camera to the established ‘rules of the film’ - which for me is all about framing and texture.
You mentioned wanting a more reactive, documentary-style project after working in commercial production. How did that shift in approach affect the way the story unfolded?
Exactly, because this was a time-capsule documentary, it was always going to be a bit experimental in form. So this project was almost as much of an opportunity to experiment with process, as it was about the content.
I had been using storyboards and scripts in other work, and wanted to break out of that structure. I was worried I might be becoming too reliant on them. So we went into this seeking the challenge of making a film with no roadmap of how the scenes would link. There was just a general idea of documenting this moment in their lives, Max and I had our visual principles, and we were self imposing the challenge to find ways to connect scenes during filming, on the day. Because this was experimental, we were able to work in that way. It doesn’t suit every project, but for this one, it was deliberate.
In the edit, finding a flow in something experimental, was a process of experimentation. It’s easy for something so open and unscripted to become too messy and disjointed. But editors Leila Gaabi and Shannon Michaelas did a beautiful job embracing and navigating this process, and shaping the flow.
What surprised you most in the process of making this film?
I think how deeply the cast connected to the final film. Sunday, who appears with her horse, said it felt like "the secrets of young people." That meant a lot.
The day we filmed by the river surprised me because it didn’t go as we’d imagined. But it became memorable. Unfortunately, there were fires on the other side of the city, so the whole sky turned red and cast an intense orange over everything. It shifted the energy of the shoot. Originally I thought we’d just capture them tubing down the river, but the cast’s conversation naturally turned to climate change. So we leaned into that.
At the same time - it was just a couple of days before Christmas, and our crew’s last shoot of the year, so everyone was almost in holiday mode. This was a passion project for the whole crew - so it was always going to be a really laid back shoot, and a lot of the crew had swim breaks in the river as we were filming. It felt very independent film, and wholesome, but also weirdly eerie to be filming, bathed in orange light from the distant fires. Like an inescapable reminder of the reality these young people are inheriting. That day really held that tension - of both the joy and unease of the world we were documenting.
What's next for you?
Writing, and more writing. Always. Trying to get my first feature off the ground, which requires a lot of patience. And then once I inevitably feel like I’ve been writing for a while, and like I haven’t actually filmed something in a while, I’ll want to make something - inspired by whatever is taking up brain space at that moment. And then I’ll probably feel guilty that I should’ve been writing more. It’s a cycle.
Lucy Knox
Director
Alexandra Galloway
Producer
Lillie Chivers
Key Cast
Sammi Chua
Key Cast
Max Gandolfo
Key Cast
Amelia Giancola
Key Cast
Flynn Glazebrook
Key Cast
Lila Hamilton
Key Cast
Sunday Harrison
Key Cast
George-Harrison Markovic
Key Cast
Sophie Janusko
Key Cast
Al Lumsden
Key Cast
Oscar Russell
Key Cast
Sonny White
Key Cast
Trust
Executive Producers
Sarah Brannan
Executive Producers
Sarah Marcuson
Associate Producers
Bill Bleakley
Associate Producers
Max Walter
Director of Photography
Sam Gann
Production Designer
Imogen Matich
Costume Stylist
Leila Gaabi
Editors
Shannon Michaelas
Editors
Matic Prusnik
Colorist
Renee Park
Sound Designer