Premiering exclusively on NOWNESS is award-winning Australian director Yianni Warnock's 'The Despair Trilogy'—a darkly humorous delve into modern alienation, with each film in the mirthfully melancholic trio starring Shane Gardiner as an always lonesome protagonist in search of connection.

A man yearns helplessly and alone in his tawdry home in the aftermath of a relationship, struggling to deal with the small task of existing. The arrival of a nameless friend sparks a riot of awkward fun. Is this happiness, or just a way of keeping the void at bay?

"Inspired by a lucid dream of two men play fighting, Playpals explores ideas of emotional immaturity and alienation through a central protagonist’s struggle to deal with and articulate grief," explains Warnock of his offbeat comedy. "The resulting film is a distanced study of loneliness and miscommunication and is part of an ongoing interest in the varying and often absurd ways men try to find meaning with each other; in Playpals’ case an animalistic but equally authentic act—one that transcends the character’s disconnection but also reinforces it."