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Three years before four food delivery riders died within two months on Sydney’s roads in 2020, filmmaker Mohini Herse conceived Appetite, a six-episode series exposing the potential for exploitation of this new incarnation of the gig economy, through a mystery laced with dark humour.
Flash forward six years, past an SBS’ Digital Originals initiative grant, and a fortuitous meeting with director Neil Sharma on the set of Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder, and that “anti-love letter to Sydney”, is the only Australian production to be an official in-competition selection at the 2023 Cannes International Series Festival.
Raj Labade (left) as Zal, Gabriel Alvarado as Bastien, Shirong Wu as Tessa, and Kabir Singh as Raj in Appetite.
“We have had a lot of interest in the format, from France, the US, the UK and Europe,” says Herse of the show, in which each episode is 10 minutes long. “It is such a global story. Everyone’s relationship with convenience culture and hustling, and whatever Bitcoin is, it seems to be a very much of-the-moment thing that we’re all trying to navigate.”
Filmed last year over 12 days, the series follows three food-delivery cyclists who take on a multinational corporation, after an unknown rider has a fatal road accident the same night their housemate disappears. The cast comprises emerging talent (Shirong Wu, Gabriel Alvarado, Raj Labade and Kabir Singh), some actual delivery riders and Marta Dusseldorp as the voice of the Appetite app.
“[The casting] is an indication of contemporary Australia,” says Herse. “When we reached out to delivery cyclist groups and unions and asked people to share their stories, the people that we got looked like those people that we ended up casting. It is really refreshing, and also it’s great they lead their own story.”
The tight production schedule and modest budget presented challenges for Sharma, who was assistant director on martial arts movie Mortal Kombat and directed episodes of the reboots of Heartbreak High and Mother and Son.
“I’ve been lucky to work on very big scale Marvel movies and shows with a massive budget,” says Sharma. “When you have that type of money, locking down a street, doing stunts, having the proper camera rigs to film people riding bicycles is all very easy.
“When you have the microbudget that we had, things become very hard. So, I was incredibly proud with what we ended up putting on screen because there’s a high production value to the stunts and the camera movement and also the story being told.