The last couple of years have surely reminded us that nobody can predict the future and nobody knows what’s coming around the corner. We can safely assume, however, that whatever troubles befall us, artists will struggle on, fighting the good fight, telling stories and taking us to places of imagination and illumination.
As always, the new year offers a range of Australian films to look forward to. Here are 10 of them.
Loveland
Director: Ivan Sen
Ivan Sen – the director of Mystery Road, Beneath Clouds and Toomelah – behind the wheel of a sumptuous-looking cyberpunk drama set in a futuristic Hong Kong? Yes please! Ryan Kwanten leads the cast as an assassin romantically drawn to a nightclub singer (Jillian Nguyen) and periodically given lecture-like monologues from a scuffy, intellectual-looking Hugo Weaving about loneliness, machines and how he should “walk away while you can”. A line that of course guarantees the protagonist will embark on a perilous journey.
In cinemas 10 February
Three Thousand Years of Longing
Director: George Miller
The great director George Miller is far from prolific, generally helming around two or three major productions a decade. Not much is known about his upcoming fantasy-drama, other than that it involves a British woman who discovers an ancient bottle in Istanbul with a genie inside it that offers her three wishes. The film (starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton) must therefore address the old “why not just wish for more wishes?” chestnut. Which we all know is a) a very good wish but b) prohibited by most genies.
Seriously Red
Director: Gracie Otto
Sometimes, when your career’s on the skids and you’re determined to get your life back on track, the only thing to do is become a Dolly Parton impersonator. Right?! This is the premise of Gracie Otto’s musical dramedy, executive produced by and co-starring Rose Byrne, about a realtor, Red (Krew Boylan), navigating the aforementioned new career with (quoting the official synopsis) “bouncing silicon breasts” and “an intense relationship with a Kenny Rogers impersonator”.
88 Days a Slave
Director: Christina Stenseth
The concept of slavery is often relegated to historical discussions, implying we live in a world where it is no longer a problem. Christina Stenseth begs to differ, and has made an observational documentary arguing modern slavery in fact takes place in this very county – on farms where travellers are exploited and underpaid through the Australian government’s working holiday maker program.
The Mountain
Director: Rolf de Heer
In the first one-and-a-half decades of the new millennium, veteran genre-hopping director Rolf de Heer (Bad Boy Bubby, Dance Me to My Song, Dingo) pumped out eight feature films and one TV documentary – but his output has been scarce in recent years. When I bumped into him recently at a hotel in Adelaide, De Heer assured me he was not retiring; not by a long shot. His next film is about a character named BlackWoman who is abandoned in a cage in the middle of the desert, continuing an array of highly respected films De Heer has made in close collaboration with Indigenous people – including Ten Canoes and Charlie’s Country, starring the late and great David Gulpilil.
Blueback
Director: Robert Connolly
Director Robert Connolly’s latest literary adaptation (his others include The Dry and Barracuda) joins a growing number of films based on Tim Winton books. With a message about preserving the beauty of Australia’s oceans, the story follows a child named Abby (Ilsa Fogg) who becomes besties with a wild groper, thus continuing another trend of homegrown films about people becoming pals with animals and creatures. This is the cinema of Babe, Storm Boy, Red Dog, Oddball and Penguin Bloom. The cast includes Mia Wasikowska, Radha Mitchell and Eric Bana.
Gold
Director: Anthony Hayes
There’s gold in them thar Zac Efron! No wait: there’s Zac Efron in them thar Gold! In his outback drama, director Anthony Hayes plonks the American heartthrob in the unforgiving Australian desert, where Efron’s drifter character a) finds a very chunky nugget of the good stuff, but b) gets increasingly distraught and frazzled, continuing a line of films in which white people in the desert get burnt like pork chops (see also: Gary Bond in Wake in Fright, Mia Wasikowska in Tracks and David Wenham in The Furnace).
In cinemas 13 January; and Stan on 25 January
War & Order
Director: Larissa Behrendt
Larissa Behrendt has carved out a significant niche as a cine-essayist exploring subjects important to Indigenous Australian culture, including in Araatika: Rise Up! (about the creation of an Indigenous Australian haka) and After the Apology (about removal of First Nations kids from their families following Kevin Rudd’s apology to the stolen generations). In War & Order, Behrendt will explore half a century of First Nations activism in Australia and the ways it has been captured by artist Richard Bell.
Elvis
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Elvis Monday⚡️
— Baz Luhrmann (@bazluhrmann) November 15, 2021
Made a little something to let you good people know we are taking care of business on June 24, 2022.#Elvis #TCB pic.twitter.com/grf8IGqfw9
The latest display of Extreme Cinematic Excess – also known as “a Baz Luhrmann movie” – made last year’s list of films to look forward to, as did a few others delayed due to the funny old year (understatement of the century) that was 2021. But given Luhrmann movies have a way of soaking up all the attention, a double inclusion feels justified. A teensy-weensy bit of footage from his upcoming Elvis Presley biopic was tweeted by the man himself last month; expect, in the full film, tonnes more glitter.
In cinemas 24 June
The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson
Director: Leah Purcell
Like The Nightingale, key themes of Leah Purcell’s feminist western – which reworks Henry Lawson’s short story The Drover’s Wife – include vengeance, gendered violence and class. The film expands on a play Purcell wrote and starred in and also adapted into a novel. Set in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains circa 1893, tough-as-nails protagonist Molly (Leah Purcell) runs a farm and raises four young children in the absence of her drover husband. The plot involves the arrival of an Aboriginal fugitive (Rob Collins) and a multiple murder case for a local police sergeant (Sam Reid, recently in The Newsreader).
In cinemas 5 May
