Close to 2,600 people awarded The Railway Man with an extended standing ovation at the film's Gala premiere screening at the Toronto International Film Festival this year.
THE RAILWAY MAN, the British/Australian film starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, has reached $7m at the Australian box office, making it one of the most successful Australian films of recent years.
The profile of Australian films in the US looks set to rise in the next two months with the debuts of Wolf Creek 2, The Railway Man and Tracks.
After directing two episodes of the second series of British crime drama Broadchurch, Jonathan Teplitzky is juggling a sizable slate of film and TV projects.
The Weinstein Co. paid a reported US$2 million for North American rights to The Railway Man after its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last September -but has waited more than six months to launch the film in the US.
The Australian-UK co-production stars Colin Firth, Rachel Weisz and Jeremy Irvine and will shoot soon
Some American critics are ambivalent about The Railway Man, full of admiration for the performances but less than whole-hearted about the film's overall impact.
This may turn out to be a premature and fanciful call but 2014 is shaping as potentially one of the strongest years for Australian films, commercially and critically, in recent memory.