Outside the Australian town of Jindabyne, local man Stuart Kane is on a fishing trip with friends when they discover the body of a murdered girl.

A three year self-described labour of love, 2040 takes the form of a visual letter from the filmmaker to his four-year-old daughter Velvet, showing her what the year 2040 could look like “if we simply embraced the best solutions that exist today.”

A lifetime of innocent fun together can’t stop the darkness from creeping in. Every summer break, Jess, her older brother Trav, and their friend Kelsey spend all their time together. When the others sneak off for a party one night, Jess slowly realises that the trio will never be the same.

Seventeen talented Australian directors from diverse artistic disciplines each create a chapter of the hauntingly beautiful novel by multi award-winning author Tim Winton. The linking and overlapping stories explore the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people’s lives in a stunning portrait of a small coastal community. As characters face second thoughts and regret, relationships irretrievably alter, resolves are made or broken, and lives change direction forever.