Sixteen year-old Gabe Nevins didn’t have any acting experience when he agreed to go along with some mates to an open casting call they read about on MySpace to be extras in a skateboard park scene for a film. He was shocked when he was offered the lead role, and so were his mates who pulled out of the audition at the last minute. In Paranoid Park, writer/director Gus Van Sant tackles the complications of being a teenager using teenagers with no previous acting experience, as he has done in many of his films – River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves in My Own Private Idaho and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting.

As Alex, Nevins does the usual teenage things like going to school, worrying about his parents’ separation, negotiating girls and hanging out at the local skate park with his friend Jared (Jake Miller). Alex is a little self-conscious as he isn’t really such a good skater, but he soon has to worry about a bigger issue than whether he’s got a ‘fag board’. When Detective Lu (Dan Liu) turns up to his high school asking for help to solve the murder of a railway security guard that took place near the park, it is apparent that Alex knows more than he is admitting to.

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Thanks to Australian cinematographer Chris Doyle, the film has a lyrical quality about it with the skating sequences being shot in grainy super 8mm film and contrasting to the more graphic realities of life that are shot in 35mm. Selected to screen at the Cannes Film Festival, this powerful film takes an impressionistic look at modern day cowboys.

Directed by Gus Van Sant. Rated M.