Directed by Kriv Stenders
In Australia, history lessons tell of the successes of early pioneers but gloss over the sacrifices made. Personal struggles get lost in statistics and milestones but director Kriv Stenders pulls no punches when he sets his drama in 1902, a year after Federation. On an isolated bush property, Nat (Aden Young) has struggled to eke out a livelihood on an unforgivingly harsh piece of land. Originally a school teacher in the Old Country, Nat’s strong religious beliefs have been his mainstay. But when his wife dies, his horse dies and fever sets in after he cuts his hand on a rusty piece of tin, his situation becomes quite desperate.
With two children to care for, Nat sees the arrival of three men from the goldfields as some sort of providence. Twelve year old Tom (Toby Wallace) thinks the ex-soldiers might be able to help them but older sister Sarah (Hanna Mangan-Lawrence) is rightly cautious as the strangers make themselves at home. But life during those times was nothing like a Henry Lawson poem, and the sense of foreboding increases when one of the men reveals a secret. Before long the film becomes a full-on psychological thriller and the characters discover that there’s nothing they won’t do if the circumstances are right. Every character is pushed way past their usual levels of tolerance and the audience is also pushed into previously unknown territory.
This film quite confronting, but it is a valuable addition to the collection of films that romanticise when Europeans first attempted to carve out livelihoods in Australia – one of the most inhospitable of places on the other side of the world. As director Kriv Stenders says, ‘We have such a rich, vibrant history and such a diverse and visually stunning landscape that I think we’ve only scratched the surface of the kinda of stories we can tell to audiences both here and overseas.’
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