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The Turning
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.
David Wenham
Simon Stone
Mia Wasikowska
Robert Connolly
Jonathan auf der Heide
Warwick Thornton
Tony Ayres
Claire McCarthy
Justin Kurzel
Anthony Lucas
Shaun Gladwell
Rhys Graham
Yaron Lifschitz
Ian Meadows
Ashlee Page
Marieka Walsh
Jub Clerc
Stephen Page
Casts & Crew
Cate Blanchett
Hugo Weaving
Rose Byrne
Miranda Otto
Richard Roxburgh
Susie Porter
Callan Mulvey
Daniel Wyllie
Harrison Gilbertson
Robyn Nevin
Matthew Nable
Finn Woodlock
Colin Friels
Libby Tanner
Dougie Baldwin
Taylor Ferguson
Mirrah Foulkes
Oscar Redding
Harrison Gilbertson
Toby Wallace
Brenna Harding
Also Directed by David Wenham
In the middle of a crowded city the paths of two strangers, a man and a woman, collide. This accidental, chance occurrence sets in motion a chain of events that sees the two strangers embark on a night of adventure and connection that challenges their separate lives.
Also Directed by Simon Stone
Anna, a young mother, escapes her cold and unfaithful husband, Ned, a businessman who's just launched his first campaign for political office. Ned chases Anna and their six-year-old daughter from Alaska to Maine, and the two go into hiding in a run-down motel on the coast.
The world premiere of composer Kaija Saariaho's opera, "Innocence", at the 2021 Aix-en-Provence Festival. Finland is the setting but the protagonists come from the four corners of Europe: a Finnish groom and his Romanian bride, a French mother-in-law and a Czech maid. Around them memories unravel in a contemporary tragedy of guilt and lost innocence.
The incredible Billie Piper (Penny Dreadful, Great Britain) returns in her Evening Standard Best Actress award-winning role. A young woman is driven to the unthinkable by her desperate desire to have a child in Simon Stone’s radical production of Lorca’s achingly powerful masterpiece. The unmissable theatre phenomenon sold out at the Young Vic and critics call it ‘an extraordinary theatrical triumph’ (The Times) and ‘stunning, searing, unmissable’ (Mail on Sunday). Billie Piper’s lead performance is described as ‘spellbinding’ (The Evening Standard), ‘astonishing’ (iNews) and ‘devastatingly powerful’ (The Daily Telegraph). Set in contemporary London, Piper’s portrayal of a woman in her thirties desperate to conceive builds with elemental force to a staggering, shocking, climax. Please note this broadcast does not have an interval.
In the last days of a dying logging town, Christian returns to his family home for his father Henry’s wedding. While home, Christian reconnects with his childhood friend Oliver, who has stayed in town working at Henry’s timber mill and is now out of a job. As Christian gets to know Oliver’s wife Charlotte, daughter Hedvig, and father Walter, he discovers a secret that could tear Oliver’s family apart.
As WWII looms, a wealthy widow hires an amateur archaeologist to excavate the burial mounds on her estate. When they make a historic discovery, the echoes of Britain's past resonate in the face of its uncertain future.
Penderecki's Opera of an entire convent, in the small French village of Loudun, apparently possessed by the devil.
The inalienable and inconceivable core of an old myth is swirling and fermenting beneath the surface of a recognizable contemporary story. Medea is called Anna in this version, a successful doctor who is trying to get on with her life after a forced confinement. She is willing to forgive the affair of her husband with a younger woman and to make a new start with him and the children. Soon it turns out that their plans for the future do not correspond. Anna is in danger of losing everything: her husband, her children, her career. She is cornered and sees only one way out.
Also Directed by Mia Wasikowska
Madly explores love in all its permutations in six short films from a vibrant group of filmmakers representing Japan, Argentina, the UK, the US, India, and Australia. All forms of love are on display in this anthology. And all manners of feelings expressed from jubilance to depression are done so strongly.
Also Directed by Robert Connolly
Based on the best-selling novel by Tim Winton, Blueback is a timely tale about the ocean, a beautiful marine creature, and a young girl’s power to change the world.
Eddie is a principled man, with a wife, a daughter and a mortgage and leads a seemingly stable and happy life as a government land assessor. Yet when the forces of economic and social change threaten this, he realises just how fragile his reality and security is. After losing his job, he checks his bank balance and finds he has only 'three dollars' to his name.
Based on Jane Harper's novel series. Sequel to 'The Dry'. Five women hitch-hike along a muddy track. Only four come out the other side. Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk has a particularly keen interest in the whereabouts of the missing bushwalker. Alice Russell is the whistleblower in his latest case - and Alice knew secrets. About the company, she worked for and the people she worked with.
The Bank, a world ripe with avarice and corruption, where O'Reilly and his ilk can thrive and honest Aussie battlers lose everything. Enter Jim Doyle a maverick mathematician who has devised a formula to predict the fluctuations of the stock market. When he joins O'Reilly's fold, he must first prove his loyalty to the "greed is good" ethos. Which way will he go? What does he have to hide?
The film tells the story of 11-year-old Dylan (Ed Oxenbould), who is brought up by his father (Sam Worthington) in a remote town in the country of Australia. Dylan’s life is changed forever when he wins a place in the regional Paper Plane Championships in Sydney. The heart warming journey of a young boy and his father reconnecting after a family’s struggle will have us cheering them all the way to the world championships of paper plane flying in Japan.
A cop returns to his hometown to face the demons of his past after his childhood friend dies in a gruesome murder-suicide.
As Indonesia prepares to invade the tiny nation of East Timor, five Australian based journalists go missing. Four weeks later, veteran foreign correspondent Roger East is lured to East Timor by the young and charismatic José Ramos-Horta to tell the story of his country and investigate the fate of the missing men. As East's determination to uncover the truth grows, the threat of invasion intensifie
In 1989, known as Mendax, Julian Assange and two friends formed a group called the International Subversives. Using early home computers and defining themselves as white hat hackers - those who look but don’t steal – they broke into some of the world’s most powerful and secretive organisations. In the eyes of the US Government, they were a major threat to national security.
Also Directed by Jonathan auf der Heide
The true story of Alexander Pearce, Australia's most notorious convict. In 1822, he and seven fellow convicts escaped from Macquarie Harbour, a place of ultra banishment and punishment, only to find a world less forgiving.. the Australian wilderness.
The true story of Australia’s most notorious convict, Alexander Pearce and his infamous journey into the beautiful yet brutal Tasmanian wilderness. A point of no return for convicts banished from their homeland, Van Diemen’s Land was a feared and dreaded penal settlement at the end of the earth.
Eva, a young virologist, who helps the local park ranger research the Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour Disease, a contagious cancer that has wiped out nearly 90% of the population. But when her husband is bitten by a stray dog, she suspects the virus has mutated to cross species and is causing violent outbursts in the hosts. Infection soon spreads through the locals and Eva must choose between saving the man she loves or the rest of humanity.
Also Directed by Warwick Thornton
Filmmaker Warwick Thornton investigates our relationship to the Southern Cross, in this fun and thought provoking ride through Australia's cultural and political landscape.
The first of four installments in the groundbreaking Heartbeat of the World anthology film series. Comprised of several short films by some of the world's most exciting directors, Words with Gods follows the theme of religion - specifically as it relates to an individual's relationship with his/her god or gods...or the lack thereof. In Words with Gods, each director recounts a narrative centered around human fragility, as well as environmental and cultural crises involving specific religions with which each has a personal relationship; including early Aboriginal Spirituality, Umbanda, Buddhism, the Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism, and Atheism. An animated sequence by Mexican animator Maribel Martinez is woven through each of the film segments, with each segment narratively connected as a feature-length film.
Paddy finds there are two separate laws, the white and the black.
Samson and Delilah's world is small- an isolated community in the Central Australian desert. When tragedy strikes they turn their backs on home and embark on a journey of survival. Lost, unwanted and alone the discover that life isn't always fair, but love never judges.
Following two indigenous Australian hunters to battle the last colony of vampires in the South-Australian desert.
Writer and Director Warwick Thornton has assembled a collection of the most poignant, sad, funny and absurd ghost stories from around Australia. He will bring them to life with the help of some of Australia's most iconic actors as the storytellers.
It’s 1929 on the vast, desert-like, Eastern Arrernte Nation lands that are now known as the Central Australian outback. Sam Kelly, a middle-aged Aboriginal man, works the land of a kind preacher, Fred Smith. After an ill-tempered bully arrives in town and Kelly kills him in self-defence, he and his wife go on the run as a posse gathers to hunt him down.
Meth Kelly explores how Australia’s colonial frontier narrative has been shaped by the imaginary heroic actions of the cult figure Ned Kelly. Through a video work projected in one of the shadowy tunnels of the ex-convict structures at Cockatoo Island, this work questions the legitimacy of Kelly’s hero status through a modern reinterpretation of his moral persona. Thornton skews the national narrative rooted in the romance of a Western, by transforming Kelly into a “meth head robbing a 7 Eleven”, placing him in a banal (sub)urban delinquent realm, far removed from cult status. Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney.
Tnorala is the Aboriginal name for Gosse's Bluff, a dramatic meteorite impact crater set in a vast plain 175km west of Alice Springs. This significant dreaming site for Western Arrernte people is steeped in mystery and tragedy. The story of its creation and the events that occurred there are narrated to the camera by Aunty Mavis Malbunka, one of the traditional story-tellers for the place.
In 1955, filmmaker Chauvel debuted Jedda. His star was a young Arrernte woman from Alice Springs named Ngarla Kunoth, or Rosalie. Her story, the story of what happened before and after Chauvel's film, is told in Rosalie's Journey.
Also Directed by Tony Ayres
A filmmaker makes a documentary about a photographer. David Edwards has been taking photographs of naked men for the past 11 years. But in this case, who is the voyeur and who is the exhibitionist? An examination of the nature of looking.
Aussie boys of Asian descent candidly discuss their status as a "minority within a minority".
Based on photographer William Yang's one man stage show, "Sadness" chronicles two diverging narratives through the use of slide photography, oral history and stylised recreation. One story follows Yang's pilgrimage into the heart of the North Queensland sugar cane fields as he investigates the murder of his uncle Fang Yuen. The other is a series of moving portraits of the many friends and lovers Yang has lost to AIDS. Director Tony Ayres skillfully weaves these two separate stories together creating a powerful testament to family, friends, love and loss. Cinematography by Tristan Milani. Narrated by William Yang.
Tom, now in his 40s, begins to write the memoirs of his 1960s childhood, as the little boy whose mother Rose was a glamorous Shanghai nightclub singer. When Rose meets Aussie sailor Bill, they are quickly married, and she packs up Tom and his older sister May to head for Melbourne. The marriage just as quickly breaks up and Rose moves with the kids to Sydney. After a succession of male friends and little success, in 1971 Rose moves back to Melbourne, in an uncomfortable arrangement living again with Bill – and his mother. With Bill called away to sea, Rose takes up with young Chinese cook Joe, but despair and conflicts over May's relationship with Joe tear the family further apart. Little Tom is deeply hurt, but May's ongoing conflict with her mother takes a respite when Rose tells her daughter about her traumatic teenage years.
The advocate for a young Iranian refugee held in detention. Amir Ali claims to be an Iranian student persecuted by the government but the Department of Immigration dispute his identity. When Julia meets Amir, he is severely depressed and close to deportation. Julia throws herself obsessively into Amir's case, causing friction between Julia and her husband, Peter. Julia eventually frees Amir and the young Iranian man moves in with Peter and Julia. As Julia helps Amir adjust to ordinary life, she finds herself increasingly attracted to this handsome, damaged young man. But she also starts to see the subtle cracks in Amir's story. Is he really who he claims he is? Or does he have a darker, more dangerous history?
An older woman complains about the excessive traffic in a public men's room across the street.
Young, charismatic, and hardworking, Sparra Farrell seems to be sailing into a happy, respectable life. He has a solid job and an adorable fiancée named Paula, and already owns a modest house in the country outside Melbourne. The only odd thing is that Sparra says precious little about his past — but that past is about to catch up with him, and wrest control of his present.
Friends and family gather around the death bed of Gavin, where they assist in the dying man's suicide. But though Gavin's pain has been laid to rest, the grief felt by everyone there has only begun, and Walking on Water compassionately follows the attempts of Gavin's closest friends Anna (Maria Theodorakis) and Charlie (Vince Colosimo) to recover from their loss.
Also Directed by Claire McCarthy
An outwardly happy Australian couple journey to Calcutta to collect their adopted baby, but on arrival find that the arrangements have yet to be finalized. Soon, the intoxicating mystic power of the Indian city pulls them in separate and unexpected directions, and the vulnerability of their marriage begins to reveal itself.
Robert tries to rekindle a relationship with his teenage daughters Emma and Zoe on their last holiday together before the divorce. He slowly begins to realize that not only has he lost access to all that he loves, but Emma, his youngest, maybe affected in a personal and destructive way.
A scientist brings her teenage daughter to a remote region of Madagascar, where her determination to save endangered lemurs puts their relationship and safety at risk.
Ten fragments of life. Three days until Christmas. Cross Life is a tale of ordinary people pained by the desire for love amidst the sensual delights of Sydney's red light district, Kings Cross.
Follows a pioneering ceramic artist who roared to prominence in the 1920s while working in Britain’s Stoke-on-Trent pottery industry.
Set during the early 1900s in South Dakota, Rachel and Isaac Dupree, an African American couple, raise their family on an isolated ranch in the Badlands.
Ophelia comes of age as lady-in-waiting for Queen Gertrude, and her singular spirit captures Hamlet's affections. As lust and betrayal threaten the kingdom, Ophelia finds herself trapped between true love and controlling her own destiny.
Also Directed by Justin Kurzel
Through unlocked genetic memories that allow him to relive the adventures of his ancestor in 15th century Spain, Callum Lynch discovers he's a descendant of the secret 'Assassins' society. After gaining incredible knowledge and skills, he is now poised to take on the oppressive Knights Templar in the present day.
In the near future, society has developed a pill that does away with the need to sleep. With the added help of an artificial sun, there is no end to morning daylight, living and work. However, as a young generation grows up deprived of the world of sleep, they consider rebelling to reclaim their dreams. The ambitious and driven Cathy was an early advocate of a sleepless world, but as she and her son Danny pick up the pieces of their lives following the death of her husband Frank, she finds the universe she helped to build is starting to crumble around her, whilst memories she fought so hard to repress are bleeding into her waking life. As Danny is further drawn into a subversive underworld of dreamers, Cathy must confront her nightmares and fight hard not to lose her son.
Events leading up to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre on Tasmania in an attempt to understand why and how the atrocity occurred.
A former Nazi captain anonymously travels the ruins of post-World War II Germany seeking to atone for his crimes by hunting down the members of the SS Death Squad who once worked under him.
A distant boy and a disturbed girl discover a blue tongue nest, but not all is as it appears.
Set against the badlands of colonial Australia where the English rule with a bloody fist and the Irish endure, Ned Kelly discovers he comes from a line of Irish rebels—an uncompromising army of cross dressing bandits immortalised for terrorising their oppressors back in Ireland. Nurtured by the notorious bushranger, Harry Power and fuelled by the unfair arrest of his mother, Kelly recruits a wild bunch of warriors to plot one of the most audacious attacks of anarchy and rebellion the country has ever seen.
Based on true events, 16 year-old Jamie falls in with his mother's new boyfriend and his crowd of self-appointed neighborhood watchmen, a relationship that leads to a spree of torture and murder.
Feature film adaptation of Shakespeare's Scottish play about General Macbeth whose ambitious wife urges him to use wicked means in order to gain power of the throne over the sitting king, Duncan.
Also Directed by Anthony Lucas
Henry's Show and Tell school project about a pet rabbit goes horribly wrong. The film was made entirely by the Lucas family in their backyard.
A child explores her changing relationships with friends in an industrial town.
Set in a world of iron dirigibles and steam powered computers, this gothic horror mystery tells the story of Jasper Morello, a disgraced aerial navigator who flees his plague-ridden home on a desperate voyage to redeem himself.
A plasticene animated film about a lonely lighthouse, a craggy old lighthouse keeper and a mysterious dark figure that moves in the fog. A delightful song ends this tale of unrequited love.
In a dark subterranean landscape the Amphibian has lost its way.
A silhouette world of gothic horror, of spindly figures dwarfed by bleak landscapes and Jules Verne machines.
Also Directed by Shaun Gladwell
Exquisite Corpse was an image and language parlour game played by the Surrealists, which asked players to collectively write or draw a story or picture, with only limited knowledge of the other players’ contributions. Translating the original game into an immersive VR experience creating a composite human body, Exquisite Corpse maintains the rules of the game with artists and filmmakers contributing, each with no knowledge of the others’ work beyond which body part they were representing, with complete artistic freedom.
Also Directed by Rhys Graham
We Travel Together is a work that talks about the kinds of relationships that humans might be able to have with a post-natural world.
Follow the epic journey of nine Indigenous Australian Rangers, along with acclaimed Indigenous musician Dan Sultan, as they travel to Kenya, Africa, to share knowledge, culture and music with a tribe of Maasai Community Rangers. Through the lens of award-winning filmmaker Rhys Graham, this film tells the often-untold story of the sacrifices and strength that bind together the international Ranger family.
A documentary following the Black Arm Band, a gathering of Australia's finest Aboriginal musicians, as they take to the road with their songs of struggle, resistance and freedom.
As four teens navigate the flashpoint of adolescent relationships, their lives will be forever scarred by a tragedy that engulfs their city. Teenagers Billie and Laura, who live in Canberra’s suburban outskirts, are best friends and share everything – even, as it turns out, Laura’s boyfriend Danny, although Laura doesn’t know this. During the summer of Canberra’s bushfires, Billie’s mother welcomes the troubled Isaac into her care and his presence causes disarray in the girls’ friendship: Laura finds herself drawn to the gentle but intense newcomer while Billie’s unpredictable ways threaten self-destruction.
Also Directed by Ian Meadows
A Parachute Falling in Siberia parallels the impending parting of a middle-aged couple facing terminal breast cancer with two Russian cosmonauts preparing to separate after hundreds of days in orbit locked aboard the MIR space station. How do you spend your final moments? How do you say goodbye?
Also Directed by Ashlee Page
Aimee and Steph are up for an adventure; its a hot summer's night and they are fueled by cheap alcohol and teen hormones. The promise of cool water lures the two girls to an isolated fire-water tank. Once there, the intimate mood of the tank takes a dramatic turn, forcing Aimee to make a decision that she will question for the rest of her life.
Also Directed by Marieka Walsh
In this stop motion sand animation, a lone hunter undertakes a search for a missing boy deep in the snow covered mountains. THE HUNTER premiered at SXSW in 2012, has featured in competition at over 50 international festivals and won several awards including the AFI/ AACTA in 2013.
Barbara was caring for her grandchildren when her granddaughter Tiara was taken from school by welfare workers. Barbara fought for the next seven months to have her returned and finally won but the consequences of the removal on the family will never go away.
A tender fable of an ageing sea captain, who risks the lives of his men when he decides to change course, taking his ship through a violent storm.
Also Directed by Jub Clerc
When Clara discovers her deceased mother’s revered ‘Book of Dark Whispers’, she can’t stop reading the strange stories within its mystical pages. Each weird tale reveals a new facet of the twisted human psyche… or the not-so-human, as the case may be. From the horror of grief to sharehouse living disaster, from existential dread to right-swiping vampires, there’s something for all tastes; as long as those tastes are twisted!
Two adventurous Kimberley kids wander deep into the Mangroves at sunset, only to find the terrifying campfire stories of the Gooynbooyn Woman may not be a myth after all.
With problems on the home front, 15-year-old Murra is on the verge of lashing out. That is, until her policeman uncle thwarts her self-destructive behaviour with a lifeline: a “photo-safari for at-risk kids”. Murra isn’t entirely convinced, but she soon joins cantankerous Kylie, uptight Sean, happy-go-lucky Elvis, and camp counsellors Fernando and Michelle on a transformative bus trip to the Pilbara. On the trail, the teens learn about fun, friendship and first crushes, as well as the forces of ‘reality’ that puncture the bubble of youth.
Also Directed by Stephen Page
A young man reconciles ancient tradition with the modern, urban world in this debut feature from Stephen Page, artistic director of Australia’s renowned Bangarra Dance Theatre.