Stephen Johnson’s 'High Ground' topped the Film Critics Circle of Australia awards on Monday, winning all five of its nominated categories, including Best Film.
Justin Kurzel's 'Nitram' has started 2022 with further industry recognition, leading the way in the Film Critics Circle of Australia Award nominations.
Stephen Johnson's 'High Ground' earned a special mention from the The Young Cinema Award jury at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, held on the Gold Coast.
Set in 1930s Arnhem Land, High Ground chronicles young Aboriginal man Gutjuk, who in a bid to save the last of his family teams up with ex-soldier Travis to track down Baywara—the most dangerous warrior in the Territory, who is also his uncle. As Travis and Gutjuk journey through the outback they begin to earn each other’s trust, but when the truths of Travis’ past actions are suddenly revealed, it is he who becomes the hunted.
For the first time ever, Sydney Film Festival will run a summer season during January's Sydney Festival.
Adelaide Film Festival has announced its first five titles as it pushes forward with a physical event in October as originally planned.
After fighting in the First World War as a sniper, Travis, now a policeman in the vast empty spaces of Northern Australia, loses control of an operation that results in the massacre of an Indigenous tribe. When his superiors insist on burying the truth, Travis leaves in disgust, only to be forced back twelve years later to hunt down Baywara, an Aboriginal warrior whose attacks on new settlers are causing havoc. When Travis, now a bounty hunter, recruits as his tracker the young mission-raised Gutjuk, the only known survivor of the carnage, memories threaten to resurface and turn the white man from hunter into the hunted. Set in the 1930s, ‘High Ground’ is inspired by true events. A frontier western about colonial violence and misunderstandings that deeply resonates in today’s Australia – and indeed all over the world – the film explores the nature of loyalty and the ability to distinguish freely between right and wrong, in opposition to the dogmas of the age in which you live.
The Samuel Goldwyn Co. has nabbed US rights to Stephen Johnson's Western 'High Ground' which received rave reviews after the world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival.