Jennifer Kent’s 'The Nightingale' platformed in Los Angeles and New York last weekend, drawing sizable audiences and largely positive reviews from US critics.
Directors Jennifer Kent and Ivan Sen, producer Liz Watts and Oscar-nominated production designer Fiona Crombie have been invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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.
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).
The outcry over Jennifer Kent’s 'The Nightingale' as the only female-directed film among the 21 in official competition at the Venice International Film Festival has not swayed the festival’s director.
Jennifer Kent had a clear purpose when she started writing the screenplay of 'The Nightingale': To define the nature of violence and its impact on women, Aboriginal people and the land.
“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.”
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.