We’re smack bang in the middle of a bumper period in Australian screen production. It comes and goes in waves: the Australian New Wave/Ozploitation boom of the late 70s and early 80s, the indie boom of the early 90s, and now what we might call the streaming boom of the 2020s, when the demand for content has opened up opportunities for Australian films that might otherwise have never seen the glow of the green light.
That same shifting landscape that has buoyed the demand for content has shortened release windows, though, and while there’s a chance some of these highly anticipated offerings might bypass the big screen altogether, even those that get a wide release might not stick around the multiplexes for long. Here, then, are the Aussie flicks we’re most keen on, listed in order of release date (when known) so you can mark up your calendar accordingly.
Blueback (January 1)
Robert Connolly adapts Tim Winton’s ecological fable, following marine biologist Abby (Mia Wasikowska) as she returns to her seaside hometown after her mother (Radha Mitchell) suffers a stroke, discovering that the real estate developers her mother has fended off her entire life still have designs on the pictureseque bay, threatening the sea life there—and in particular the titular blue groper Abby bonded with as a child. A superb realisation of Winton’s familiar themes, this is odds on the Australian family film of the year.
Transfusion (January 5)
Written and directed by Aussie acting mainstay Matt Nable (1%) and starring Avatar’s Sam Worthington, Transfusion sees Wortho as a former SAS soldier grappling with the tragic loss of his wife (Phoebe Tonkin) and trying to do right by his troubled son (Edward Carmody), who is drawn into the criminal world by an old comrade (Nable himself). Replete with themes of trauma, redemption, fatherhood, and brotherhood, this looks to be another excellent entry into the annals of Relentlessly Grim Australian Crime Cinema.
You Can Go Now (January 26)
“I’m an activist masquerading as an artist!” says Kamilaroi man Richard Bell in You Can Go Now, a documentary on his life and work. Covering 50 years of Indigenous activism and resistance, the film follows the life of ‘Richie’, the art world enfant terrible who grew up in a tin shed, got politically radicalised on the streets of Redfern and went on to become one of the most renowned artists in the country. This promises to be an enervating look at Bell’s entire body of work as both a creative and a fierce advocate for Indigenous self-determination.
Of An Age (March 23)
Macedonian-Australian director Goran Stolevski isa having a good run at the moment. His arthouse folk horror You Won’t Be Alone has won wide acclaim, and his next film, Of An Age, has already done incredibly well on the festival loop, having taken out the CinefestOZ $100,000 Film Prize. Starring Elias Anton, Thom Green and Hattie Hook, Of An Age starts in the Summer of 1999 when an unexpected, intense, and short romance blossoms between a seventeen-year-old Serbian ballroom dancer and his best friend’s big brother. A decade later the pair reunite for a bittersweet meditation on fleeting love.
Sweet As (April 13)
The debut feature from Nyulnyul and Yawuru director Jub Clerc, Sweet As is a warm but unsentimental coming of age tale that follows an Indigenous teen from a troubled background, Murra (Shantae Barnes-Cowan), as she discovers a new sense of self on an outback photography trip for at-risk youths.
Set and shot in Western Australian’s stunning Pilbara region, this is the first feature to be written and directed by an Indigenous Western Australian woman, and co-stars Tasma Walton, Mark Coles Smith, Ngaire Pigram, Pedrea Jackson, Carlos Sanson Jr, and first timers Mikayla Levy and Andrew Wallace. Having won effusive praise on the festival circuit, this is sure to do well on wide release.
The New Boy (late 2023)
It’s always exciting when two screen legends collaborate, and they don’t come more legendary than director Warwick Thorton (Sweet Country) and actor Cate Blanchett (you’d recognise her if you saw her).
📣NEWS!📣 Newcomer Aswan Reid has been cast in the titular role of Warwick Thornton’s new feature film The New Boy, alongside Cate Blanchett, Deborah Mailman and Wayne Blair, with filming to wrap in regional SA this week. MORE: https://t.co/2D9WEExuJF pic.twitter.com/ebLRHqZGxT
— SA Film Corporation (@SA_Film) December 6, 2022
Set in the 1940s, The New Boy follows a nine-year-old Aboriginal orphan boy (Aswan Reid) who turns up in the middle of the night at a remote monastery run by a renegade nun (Blanchett, who is also producing), upsetting the delicately balanced world therein. A story of spiritual conflict by one of our best filmmakers, starring one of our finest thesps? We’re in. Deborah Mailman and Wayne Blair co- star.
Image: Vince Valitutti
Bring Him to Me (undated)
Occupation director Luke Sparke turns his attention from aliens to more earthly dangers in this crime thriller from screenwriter Tom Evans. Barry Pepper (Saving Private Ryan, The Green Mile) stars as a getaway driver ordered to drive a young and unsuspecting passenger to what is doubtless going to be a grisly fate, sparking a crisis of conscience in the seasoned crim. The Occupation films have shown that Sparke can wring a lot of production value out of limited resources, so it’ll be interesting to see what he does in a new genre. One resource that isn’t lacking here is acting talent, with Sam Neill and Rachel Griffiths co-starring.
Kid Snow (undated)
Set in outback 70s Western Australia and the rough-as-guts world of tent boxing, Kid Snow sees a washed-up Irish boxer (Billy Howle) finally given a chance to redeem himself in a rematch against the man who blattered him into the canvas a decade prior. However, a chance encounter with single mother Sunny (Phoebe Tonkin) forces him to imagine a future outside of the ring.
Co-starring Tom Bateman, Hunter Page-Lochard, Mark Coles Smith, and Nathan Phillips, with Paul Goldman (Suburban Mayhem) directing from a script by veteran Aussie actor John Brumpton (Romper Stomper) and Stephen Cleary, this is giving big Sunday Too Far Away vibes, which makes us keen.
Run Rabbit Run (undated)
Sarah Snook takes time out from trying to impress Brian Cox in Succession to play a fertility doctor in this supernatural thriller from director Daina Reid) and screenwriter Hannah Kent. Snook’s Sarah thinks she has a handle on life, death, and the firm divide in between, but when her daughter Mia starts acting unusually after her seventh birthday, she must come to terms with both a possible supernatural explanation and her own traumatic past.
We tend to do well with spooky kids in richly psychological thrillers (see: The Babadook, Celia), and this latest entry into the subgenre will be getting an airing at Sundance in January before a wider release later in the year. Damon Herriman, Greta Scacchi and Lily LaTorre co-star.
Force of Nature (Undated)
Following on from the smash hit outback noir The Dry, this sequel reunites director Robert Connolly (he keeps busy) with actor Eric Bana for the further adventures of AFP detective Aaron Falk. Adapting the novel of the same name by Jane Harper, this crime drama, currently filming in Victoria, sees Falk investigating the disappearance of a woman on a camping trip with four friends, inevitably discovering a tangled web of mixed loyalties, suspicion and betrayal. Anna Torv, Deborra-Lee Furness, Richard Roxburgh, Tony Briggs and Jacqueline McKenzie co-star. With The Dry being one of the biggest Australian hits ever, expectations are high for this follow up.
