It is always a pleasure to come to Australia. I've travelled to atmospheric cities Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and said hello to kangaroos, koalas, penguins and pelicans. Restaurant menus include raw kangaroo meat, ugh, and shops sell kangaroo balls keychains ("genuine kangaroo scrotum"), double ugh. Kuch bhi!

I've been invited since 2013 on the International Nominations Council or Feature Films Selection Committee of the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA, Brisbane, Australia) to select nominees for the awards, given to the best Asian and Pacific films from 70 nations. My fellow Council members this year included Hong-Joon Kim (Korea), Maxine Williamson (Australia), Kiki Fung (Hong Kong), Kirill Razlogov (Russia), Delphine Garde-Mroueh (France) and U-Wei Bin HajiSaari (Malaysia). I've also been Script Mentor on the Asia Pacific Screen Lab, mentoring emerging Asian filmmakers from Singapore, Iraq, Jordan and Australia/Vietnam, including Yeo Siew Hua's A Land Imagined, which won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival.