Hanna (Julia Garner) is backpacking across Australia with her best friend Liv (Jessica Henwick). Running low on funds, they decide that a job tending bar in an Outback mining town might be a lark — the job comes with free lodging, after all, and not a little booze. The owner, Billy (Hugo Weaving) does his best to keep the rowdy regulars in order, but then again he’s always drunk himself. Beer culture in a place like this is always going to be a wild ride, but the young women have no idea just how quickly the bottom can drop out of their world. This deeply unsettling film is inspired by a true story — or, more accurately, many true stories. Director and co-writer Kitty Green comes from a documentary background and just as she did with her acclaimed 2019 #MeToo drama The Assistant (also with Julia Garner), Green exactingly grounds the material in the real world. But that’s not to say this cautionary tale is anything less than gripping. Expect a vertiginous decline in Australian tourism.
A masterfully constructed pressure cooker about the perils of being a woman… Few movies have ever so palpably or intricately conveyed the violent pall of male attention.
David Ehrlich, Indiewire
Jessica Henwick, Julia Garner, Hugo Weaving, Bree Bain, Toby Wallace
Australia/UK
2023
Showcase
English
Sexual Violence
At The Park
At The Rio
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Simon Gillis
Producer
Emile Sherman, Liz Watts, Iain Canning, Kath Shelper
Screenwriter
Kitty Green, Oscar Redding
Cinematography
Michael Latham
Editor
Kasra Rassoulzadegan
Production Design
Leah Popple
Original Music
Jed Palmer
Director
Kitty Green
Kitty Green was born in Melbourne. Her works include the documentaries Ukraine is Not a Brothel (2013) and Casting JonBenet (2017), as well as the narrative feature The Assistant (2019).
Filmography: Ukraine is Not a Brothel (2013); Casting JonBenet (2017); The Assistant (2019)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Blue Trail
77-year-old Tereza makes a break for the Brazilian jungle in this trippy septuagenarian fantasy, the latest from Brazilian director Gabriel Mascaro is a quirky picaresque, lushly photographed and filled with mordant humour.
Calle Málaga
Seventy-nine-year-old María Ángeles lives independently in Tangier's Spanish quarter. When her daughter pressures her into selling her apartment, she refuses to give in, finding in her old age a new resilience and an unexpected romantic connection.
Two Prosecutors
In the midst of Stalin’s purges, a naïve prosecutor sets out to investigate a prisoner’s innocence, unaware of the labyrinthine bureaucracy awaiting him. A Kafkaesque procedural thriller about the pursuit of justice in the face of corruption.
Image: © SBS Productions
The Skeleton of Mrs Morales
In this delightful black comedy, an avuncular taxidermist (our old amigo Arturo de Córdova) is beloved by many but not his wife (Amparo Rivelles), a religious fanatic who can't bear to be touched. One day she pushes him too far...
The Eyes of Ghana
In his debut feature doc Ben Proudfoot unearths the story — and the images — of Chris Hesse, personal cameraman to Ghana's revolutionary leader, Kwame Nkrumah, who was deposed in a coup in 1966. This is a fascinating history reclaimed from the archives.