Based on the true story of Sam Bloom’s life-changing injury and psychological recovery with the aid of her family’s pet magpie, Penguin Bloom eschews aesthetic or narrative overcomplication in its translation to screen. Speaking with director Glendyn

Seth Larney’s indie sci-fi feature debut depicts a world in which oxygen is a limited commodity and the world is ravaged by the effects of anthropogenic climate change. But while its ultimately hopeful ecological message is laudable, Bronwyn Lovell f

DEPARTING FROM THE DISTINCTIVE VISUAL STYLE THAT MADE THE COMPANY FAMOUS, STUDIO GHIBLI’S FIRST 3D-ANIMATED FEATURE FILM – DIRECTED BY GOR ō MIYAZAKI AND ADAPTED FROM A BOOK BY DIANA WYNNE JONES – NONETHELESS CARRIES ON THE SENSIBILITIES OF PREVIOUS

The follow-up to his acclaimed debut Ilo Ilo, Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen’s second feature reflects many of the same thematic concerns about family relationships, domestic responsibility, and the gulf between his homeland’s self-representation

New Zealand hip-hop label Dawn Raid Entertainment has been a trailblazer since its launch in 1999, bringing a distinctly Polynesian sensibility to a traditionally African-American artform – a journey chronicled in Oscar Kightley’s new documentary. At

Against a backdrop of declining animal populations and out-of-control climate change, Kathy Drayton’s documentary chronicles the journey of the director’s child from secondary school to a successful music career in young adulthood – in doing so, givi

ATOM is pleased to launch a key educational resource for teachers, parents and students: the ATOM Study Guide Spreadsheet. The spreadsheet accesses and overviews a selection of ATOM study guides from the vast library on The Education Shop. It also

Accounts of James Cook’s ‘discovery’ of Australia have long been told solely from the viewpoint of European colonisers, an imbalance that Steven McGregor’s documentary seeks to rectify. Presented by spoken-word poet Steven Oliver and structured aroun

DRAMATISING THE THRILLS AND ANXIETIES OF A TRANSGENDER GIRL STARTING AFRESH IN SECONDARY SCHOOL, JULIE KALCEFF’S FOUR-PART CHILDREN’S SERIES FIRST DAY TREATS ITS PROTAGONIST’S IDENTITY MATTER-OF-FACTLY WHILE TACKLING COMPLEX SUBJECT MATTER – WHETHER

In a screen industry that largely shuns big-budget genre films, Luke Sparke’s science fiction sequel is a rarity: an Australian production that attempts to follow the path of the Hollywood action blockbusters that dominate the box office. As David Mi

Tracing the spectacular rise of Sydney-based Bangarra Dance Theatre from a young and hungry independent company driven by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander creatives to becoming one of Australia’s most treasured performing-arts outfits, Wayne Bla

Australian cinema has a long history of outlaw heroes, and this independent feature – about the friendship that develops between a teenage criminal on the run and the terminally ill girl he kidnaps – fits squarely within that tradition. But while the

A FEEL-GOOD UNDERDOG STORY SET IN THE WORLD OF COMPETITIVE PAPER PLANE FLYING, ROBERT CONNOLLY’S 2014 FILM BEGINS IN THE PLACE WHERE ITS PREMISE HAS THE MOST USEFUL REAL-WORLD APPLICATION: THE CLASSROOM. AS DAVE CREWE OUTLINES, THE FILM PROVIDES PLEN

Among John Duigan’s prolific credits as director and writer, Flirting has not received the critical attention it deserves. Such diverse pieces as 1978’s Mouth to Mouth and 1987’s The Year My Voice Broke have been quite widely discussed for their plac

Were we to shoot in America, it would emerge as a half-assed Western, with bars instead of pubs, cowboys instead of sheep drovers – they move differently, walk and react differently. Unlike in the Old West, no one carried guns in the outback. How cou

Country-music icon Slim Dusty takes centre stage alongside Joy McKean, his wife and lifelong artistic collaborator, in Kriv Stenders’ affectionate documentary portrayal of the couple and their work. Packed with songs and archival material, the film i

In 2010, as the US Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was congratulating itself for finally anointing a woman, Kathryn Bigelow, as Best Director, its Australian counterpart had already bestowed its equivalent award on no fewer than eight fem

You could say that ‘scrambling to adapt’ was the theme of the thirty-fifth Screen Forever Conference, held online by Screen Producers Australia from 16–18 February 2021. Over three days and forty sessions (featuring a total of 120 speakers), the Aust

Inspired by the long-overlooked history of the cameleers who journeyed from Afghanistan and beyond to haul supplies across the late-nineteenth-century Australian outback, Roderick MacKay’s debut feature paints a complicated portrait of the country’s

A diptych shot in an Iranian juvenile-detention facility for girls, Mehrdad Oskouei’s two documentaries shine a light both on the lives and friendships of those incarcerated within and the patriarchal oppression that awaits them beyond – this latter

Last year’s most acclaimed Australian TV series has also been a target for criticism over its foregrounding of white characters in a story that’s ostensibly about Australia’s racialised refugee policies. But while such choices reflect much broader st

A faithful and efficient adaptation of the popular crime novel by Jane Harper, Robert Connolly’s film was the local cinematic success story of early 2021. But considered in the context of recent Australian genre works that have capably straddled the

To say Australian cinemas have been on life support during COVID-19 would be to imply that someone was looking after them. While that may have been the case for the local production industry, cinema operators have been left to bleed – and bleed they

High Ground is a provocative interrogation into the nation’s bloody history, as Nicholas Godfrey writes. High Ground (Stephen Maxwell Johnson, 2020) is an arresting and immersive film that uses the genre of the western to bring Australia’s past to l

‘Why don’t we just turn around and go back the way we came up?’ the eighty-year-old Paul Hogan, playing himself, asks at the outset of The Very Excellent Mr. Dundee (2020). In one of writer-director Dean Murphy’s wittier touches, the image that accom