Ben Elton is fired up ahead of the world premiere of his new film, the warm-hearted comedy Three Summers, at the weekend.
"Oh my god," the comic, writer and director says with his trademark chatty enthusiasm.
"Can you imagine how it feels after two years pretty focused on the film and now suddenly we've got this wonderful night ahead of us?"
The film, which follows a colourful bunch of characters at a folk music festival, debuts with a gala screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival on Saturday.
"It's a dream come true," Elton says. "Filmmaking is the hardest thing to pull off.”
Three Summers centres on a love story between two young musicians – a sparky crowd-pleasing violinist played by Rebecca Breeds, formerly of Home and Away, and a serious-minded theremin performer played by Ireland's Robert Sheehan.
Michael Caton plays a Morris dancer who was once a child migrant from England, with Magda Szubanski as the festival's announcer, Deborah Mailman as an AA counsellor, John Waters as a hard-drinking musician, Kelton Pell as the head of an Indigenous dance troupe, Joseph Pedley as a troubled young dancer and Amay Jain as a fostered Afghan refugee.
Although there are prominent Indigenous, immigration and refugee storylines in Three Summers, Elton is surprised by the suggestion he has made a political film.
"I really didn't see that coming at all," he says.
"To me it's just a bunch of stories and I don't think you can tell a bunch of Australian stories without talking about the things we all talk about – some of those are fun and benign and others are more challenging."
Elton says he had no intention of making any political points in the comedy.
"All my film says is we need to listen to each other, we need to recognise we're all in the same country on the same planet, and if we listen to each other's stories, we might perhaps understand our own," he says.
The inspiration for Three Summers came when Elton was sitting in the bar at the real life Fairbridge Festival, at Pinjarra south of Perth, and thinking about the range of characters who returned year after year.
"I thought, 'here we all are. There's your rainbow tent and there's your strange person doing a weird busk’,” he said.
"We're all kind of looking at the differences.
“Australia is not homogenous.
“It's not one thing. It's not one attitude. And there's not one way of being Australian.
"I thought that was terribly well illustrated at the wonderful Fairbridge Festival, which is a happy, family event."
Three Summers opens in cinemas on November 2.
