Bittersweet comedy 'Babyteeth' has swept this year's AACTA Awards, picking up seven prizes at Monday's ceremony including Best Film and Best Direction for debut filmmaker Shannon Murphy.
Jennifer Kent's 'The Nightingale' dominated the Australian Film Critics Association's annual awards, winning all eight prizes for local narrative features, while 'The Australian Dream' was named best documentary.
Set in 1825, Clare, a young Irish convict woman, chases a British officer through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. On the way she enlists the services of an Aboriginal tracker named Billy, who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.
Wednesday's AACTA Awards saw a trifecta for Jennifer Kent, who took home Best Film, Best Direction and Best Screenplay for 'The Nightingale', with star Aisling Franciosi also winning Best Lead Actress.
While Jennifer Kent’s 'The Nightingale' has achieved an 86 per cent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes since the world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, many critics have described the tale of rape, murder as revenge as harrowing and bleak.
Bron Creative, the LA and Vancouver-based company which produced Denzel Washington’s 'Fences' and Nate Parker’s 'The Birth of a Nation', will produce and co-finance the thriller with Bruna Papandrea's Made Up Stories.
Critic David Stratton has curated a program of 10 "essential films" directed by Australian female filmmakers for the Sydney Film Festival and the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA).
“There are some directors, when they come knocking, you essentially go, 'I will play a horse in your movie.’ It doesn’t matter if it’s a small role.”