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
Blue Heron
In the late 1990s, eight-year-old Sasha and her Hungarian immigrant family relocate to a new home on Vancouver Island. Their fresh start is interrupted by increasingly dangerous behaviour from Jeremy, the family’s oldest child.
The Last One for the Road
Two middle-aged drunkards drive across the Veneto region on a freewheeling bender, taking a young college student along for the ride. A celebration of the spirit of drink and the kinds of stories told around a table of old friends and too much wine.
The Mother and the Bear
Johnny Ma’s film stars Kim Ho-jung as a Korean woman who flies to Winnipeg when her immigrant daughter is hospitalized there. This crowd-pleaser plays up cultural differences to hilarious effect and offers a touching take on mother-daughter tension.
How Deep Is Your Love
Filmmaker Eleanor Mortimer tags along with a team of oceanographers and marine biologists as they survey the Clarion-Clipperton fracture, one of the most remote spots on Earth, home to a dazzling array of unknown creatures.
