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
Clan of the Painted Lady + Q&A
Jennifer Chiu's engrossing documentary explores the Hakka — a people, a language, and a culture that have been obscured for far too long. Tracing her own lineage back from Canada to China, the director creates an illuminating, bravely personal film.
Fiume o Morte!
The Croatian city of Rijeka rediscovers its own past in this delightfully unconventional hybrid documentary about Italian poet and proto-fascist Gabriele D’Annunzio, who seized the city known in Italian as Fiume in 1919.
Silent Friend
In this entrancing reverie from On Body and Soul director Ildikó Enyedi, we are invited to contemplate several human specimens from the vantage point of a mighty Ginkgo biloba tree on the grounds of a German university.
At the Place of Ghosts
In this supernatural Indigenous thriller from the director of Wildhood, siblings Mise'l and Antle journey into Sk+te'kmujue'katik (the Place of Ghosts), a primordial forest that exists outside of time, to confront their violent upbringing.
Bushido
An impeccable samurai (and "Go" expert), Kakunoshin is framed for a crime and forced into exile. Years later he stumbles across the true reason for his fall from grace, and sets about exacting his revenge...