“This malevolence more or less broke Geoffrey’s heart,” says the former prime minister, who championed and supported Tozer since first hearing him play at Canberra’s St Edmund’s College in 1988. Paul Keating delivers his eulogy at St Patrick's Cathedral in 2009. Credit:Pat Scala Filmmaker Janine Hosking (My Khmer Heart, Ganja Queen) first came across Tozer’s story in a newspaper article following his death. “Then research led me to Paul Keating’s eulogy,” she says. “I thought maybe there was a film there. I didn’t want it to be a hagiography. I wanted it to be a real look at this person's life in light of the nature of Mr Keating's eulogy." The Eulogy is a 103-minute documentary that tries to arrive at the truth behind the life of Geoffrey Tozer. Was he a tortured genius, shamefully shunned by a jealous establishment, as Keating believes? Or is there a more nuanced interpretation?

Tozer’s brilliance was revealed early. He was just eight years old when he gave his first recital on the ABC. Less than a year later, he performed Bach’s fifth piano concerto in Melbourne, all the while driven along by his passionately ambitious mother, Verna. He began winning competitions and attracted the attention of luminaries including Daniel Barenboim, Benjamin Britten and Mstislav Rostropovich. In his late 20s and 30s, he toured and recorded extensively, aided financially by grants established by the then treasurer Paul Keating. Geoffrey Tozer and Paul Keating at the Australian Institute of Music in 2004. Credit:Peter Morris However, for all his ferocious talent, Tozer’s promise was never fully realised and he died in 2009 alone and in virtual penury after years battling alcoholism. "Things did go very wrong for Geoffrey in the latter part of his career,” says Hosking. “I don’t think there is a single answer. Frustratingly, real life is so complex. I feel he did have an inability to handle emotional relationships and the relationship with his mother portrayed in the film did contribute to some of the problems later on but it wasn’t the sole reason."

Loading To tell Tozer’s story, Hosking enlisted the help of Richard Gill, the much-loved conductor and educator who died last October. The film follows Gill as he seeks to piece together the truth about Tozer’s life and what led to his lonely and untimely death. "Richard was such a joy to work with and was willing to go on the journey,” says Hosking. “He really grabbed on to the project. But towards the end he became ill. It was a very great gift for us to be able to work with him.” Keating also agreed to take part and to record his eulogy for the cameras in an empty St Patrick’s (the original was never captured).