SWEET COUNTRY 1st July 2018

'Sweet Country makes brilliant use of the Australian outback as the setting for a hard-hitting story that satisfies as a character study as well as a sociopolitical statement. '          

- Rotten Tomatoes critic consensus

''Rangy and lean as a cattle dog, Warwick Thornton’s 1920s-set tale of racial tension and rough justice in Australia’s Northern Territory is an intriguing mongrel mix of cinematic bloodlines. The most obvious influence is the western. When Indigenous Australian farm worker Sam (Hamilton Morris) is forced to shoot a drunken white landowner in self-defence, he and his wife, Lizzie, (Natassia Gorey-Furber) head out into the bush, pursued by dogged lawman Sergeant Fletcher (Bryan Brown) and a posse that includes Sam’s friend and employer, Fred Smith (Sam Neill). The “decent man forced into violence” is a stalwart of the western tradition – there’s a touch of the stoic resignation of Gregory Peck in Henry King’s The Gunfighter in Sam’s tacit resourcefulness. But, with a scene featuring a rowdy screening of The Story of the Kelly Gang (thought to be the first feature-length film ever made), Thornton also nods to Australia's own frontier legends, But there is something else: a sparse yet mythic quality that owes a debt to both the oral tradition of the country's indigenous people and to religious parables that are a guiding force in the lives of those who fall to the light side of this darkly delineated morality tale."  Wendy Ide, Guardian 10 Mar 2018

Director:

 Warwick Thornton

Writers:

 Steven McGregor, David Tranter

Stars:

 Bryan Brown, Matt Day, Tremayne Doolan 

Awards:

Adelaide Film Festival 2017 - Best Fiction Feature

Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2017 - Best Film

Toronto International Film Festival 2017 - Platform Prize 

Venice Film Festival 2017 - Special Jury Prize