Sweet Country

Wednesday 7 July at 7.30pm

Warwick Thornton│Australia│2017│113 mins│R16 violence, sexual violence, offensive language & content that may disturb

Wanted for murder after killing a white station owner in self-defence, an Aboriginal farm worker escapes into the perilous Northern Territory outback in 1929. Starring Sam Neill and Bryan Brown, and based on a series of true events.

“It’s 1929 on the vast, desert-like Eastern Arrernte Nation lands that are now known as the Central Australian outback. Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris), a middle-aged Aboriginal man, works the land of a kind preacher, Fred Smith (Sam Neill). After an ill-tempered bully arrives in town and Kelly kills him in self-defence, he and his wife, Lizzie, go on the run as a posse gathers to hunt him down. With a sensitively written screenplay by Aboriginal writers Steven McGregor and David Tranter, Thornton expands on the themes of his extraordinary feature debut, Samson & Delilah, and draws on the conventions of the American Western to explore the genesis of contemporary Australian racism and the generational neglect of Aboriginal people… Thornton creates an indelible visual language that penetrates the complex relationship between indigenous culture and white-power-obsessed colonialism.” – Sundance Film Festival 2018