Metro

Colin Thiele’s 1963 novella Storm Boy was meant for children first and foremost, and the same can be said about Henri Safran’s beloved 1976 film adaptation, scripted primarily by Sonia Borg. But the story told in both is part of the larger body of wh

Black absorbs meaning the way it absorbs light. In clothing, it’s the colour of authority and sophistication, secrecy and simplicity, grief and lust. It can be both bold and sober, making its wearers stand out glamorously or blend in discreetly. In B

‘I think something I am coming to realise as a journalist is that, when you write about other people, you hurt them in some way,’ Erik Jensen tells me. He says this knowing that I’m going to be writing about him. Despite his statement, he is generous

Memories of happiness lost haunt the script of Brisbane-based writer/director Ben Hackworth’s sophomore feature, Celeste (2018) – both on the page and between the lines during its writing process. Radha Mitchell stars as the eponymous opera singer, w

In Jirga (Benjamin Gilmour, 2018), an Australian undertakes a perilous journey to return to the site of an Afghan firefight from three years earlier. Mike (Sam Smith) makes the difficult trip not out of professional duty, however, but out of personal

After years of being brought to life as part of Damian Callinan’s live stage show, the fictional town of Bodgy Creek has hit the big screen in Mark Grentell’s The Merger (2018). In the tradition of The Castle (Rob Sitch, 1997), the film is iconically

I came out as trans to my grandma about a year before she died. My mother was against it, insisting it was unfair to ask someone of her advanced age to contend with such new, complex ideas. I gave my grandma more credit than that. In a recent intervi

In this era of entertainment oversaturation, when films can live or die on word-of-mouth praise, the documentary is having a mini moment. Showing in Australian cinemas at the time of writing are blockbuster documentaries on two fashion luminaries (Mc

Women detectives have been titillating and/or terrorising TV audiences since Honey West (Anne Francis) and her sidekick ocelot, Bruce Biteabit, burst onto the small screen in 1965.1 Since then, female crime-fighters have become decidedly less camp, t

When Hirokazu Koreeda won the Palme d’Or – the Cannes Film Festival’s highest prize – in 2018, it was seen as something of a surprise. Not simply due to the fact that Shoplifters, which premiered there, was a modest, humanist picture, but also becaus

This article refers to the original Japanese-language release. Mamoru Hosoda’s Mirai (2018) opens in anticipation. Sheet glass fogs over with breath, only to be quickly wiped away as Kun (Moka Kamishiraishi), a four-year-old boy, stares out the windo

Jia Zhang-Ke has been busy. In the year since his last feature, Mountains May Depart (2015), he has produced several films through his company, Xstream Pictures; contributed a segment to the omnibus film Where Has the Time Gone? (2017); played a key

We see four men – lanky, floppy-haired, tufted with goatees – sporting Converses and Pink Floyd T-shirts. They play air guitar and air drums; they make the sign of the horns with their hands. They’re into Metallica logos, and they rehearse atonal noi

Jason King is not afraid of the dark. In many ways, he seeks it out. He earns his living as a security guard on long, lonely night shifts. In his spare time, he volunteers his services as a ghost hunter to Sydney residents struggling with haunted hom

Stepping into the aptly named, but decidedly uncinematic, SpACE @ Collins during the second week of the 2018 Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF), I was greeted in the dim light by two bodies with heads rotating, standing in separate circles

Karrabing is not a clan, not a language group, not a nation. It is an aspiration.1 There is just one fixed protagonist in the installations and short films of the Karrabing Film Collective: the Australian landscape features prominently in each of its

This wasn’t the distant nightmare scenario experienced by Jodie Foster’s Sarah Tobias in The Accused (Jonathan Kaplan, 1988) or the faraway feminist fantasy of Geena Davis’ and Susan Sarandon’s titular characters in Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott, 199

For the first time ever in its history, the Screen Forever conference has offered a free creche to delegates. The service – a joint initiative between the South Australian Film Corporation (SAFC), Create NSW, Screen Producers Australia and Women in F