History is often told in sweeping gestures – conquest, empire, survival. But in Zumeca, David Maler narrows the lens. Set against the violent collision of worlds in the early days of the Americas, the film reframes the so-called “discovery” of the New World through something far more intimate: the relationship between a Spaniard, Miguel, and…
From the outside, The Testament of Ann Lee might sound like an unlikely cinematic proposition: a period biopic about the founder of the Shakers, structured as a musical, rooted in ecstatic song and movement rather than spectacle. But in the hands of writer-director Mona Fastvold and star Amanda Seyfried, the film becomes something far more…
When How To Make A Killing hits screens, audiences meet Becket Redfellow, a charmingly ruthless heir-in-waiting determined to reclaim the fortune his estranged, high-society family denied him at birth. Disowned and raised in the working-class world of New York, Becket (Glen Powell) will stop at nothing – and kill anyone in his way – to…
In 1967, two grizzly bear attacks nine miles apart shattered the illusion that America’s national parks were a perfectly managed wilderness. Nearly six decades later, Grizzly Night revisits that harrowing evening with a human-first lens – less creature feature, more reckoning with faith, fear and fragility. Directed by first-time feature filmmaker Burke Doeren and written…
The end of the world has rarely felt this intimate. In Worldbreaker, the earth is split apart by an event known as The Stitch, unleashing feral, mutating creatures called Breakers and reshaping the balance of survival itself. With men most susceptible to infection, women lead the fight for humanity’s future. Amid the chaos, a battle-scarred…
There are films about chosen family – and then there are films that gently ask whether your biological family might be something you can choose, too. In Jimpa, acclaimed director Sophie Hyde (Good Luck to You, Leo Grande) returns with a tender, funny and quietly radical portrait of three generations negotiating love, identity and the…
There’s a distinct kind of cinematic pleasure that comes from a sweeping romantic comedy – the kind that whisks audiences away to sun-drenched landscapes, pairs irresistible leads, and leans wholeheartedly into love without cynicism. If the global trailer launch for You, Me & Tuscany is anything to go by, that pleasure is firmly back on…
Lauren Call is, in many ways, used to navigating dual roles. A fourth-generation Californian born and raised in Costa Mesa, she has been in front of cameras and on stages since she was six years old – from local and regional theatre across the state, to honing her craft at Orange County School of the…
When Baz Luhrmann went searching for Elvis Presley, he didn’t just find an icon – he found a voice. Premiering to Australian audiences at the AACTA Festival, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert unveils long-lost footage painstakingly uncovered and restored by the Academy Award–nominated filmmaker, offering an intimate, unguarded portrait of the King that feels both…
Talking to Stephanie McIntosh at the AACTA Festival Awards Industry Gala, you’re reminded just how fluid her career has always been – and how thoughtfully she reflects on it. From her breakthrough years on Neighbours and her pioneering pop album, Tightrope, to the accompanying televisual journey The Steph Show that felt almost ahead of its…
In Is This Thing On?, intimacy isn’t played for grand gestures or easy resolutions. It’s found in the quiet, uncomfortable spaces where love begins to shift shape. Directed by Bradley Cooper, the film observes Alex and Tess Novak as their marriage gently fractures, following two people forced to confront who they are beyond the roles…
From the moment The Wrecking Crew was announced, it felt less like a standard studio project and more like an inevitability. Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista – two of the most physically imposing stars working today – had already proven their onscreen chemistry as brothers in See. Fans could sense it. So could they. What…
After the Breakers rose – monstrous creatures that infect and twist their victims – men fell first, leaving women to lead the fight for survival. In this perilous new world, Willa’s mother is one of the war’s fiercest warriors, while her father, a battle-scarred veteran, hides with Willa on a remote island, training her in…
In Addition, Grace Lisa Vandenburg (Teresa Palmer) counts everything – numbers are the scaffolding of her meticulously ordered life. But when a chance encounter with Seamus (Joe Dempsie) turns her world upside down, Grace is forced to confront the chaos she’s long avoided. Directed by Marcelle Lunam and based on Toni Jordan’s bestselling novel, the…
Grace Lisa Vandenburg (Teresa Palmer) counts everything. Numbers are the quiet architecture holding her world together, until a chance encounter with Seamus (Joe Dempsie) begins to loosen the careful order she’s built around herself. Directed by Marcelle Lunam and adapted from Toni Jordan’s bestselling novel, Addition is a story about self-acceptance and recognising what truly…
Ángel Manuel Soto’s The Wrecking Crew wastes no time establishing its swagger: a sun-drenched, bone-crunching action comedy set on the streets of Hawaii, where estranged half-brothers Jonny (Jason Momoa) and James (Dave Bautista) reunite after their father’s mysterious death, only to find themselves tangled in buried secrets and a family-shattering conspiracy. When our Peter Gray…
Australian systems change-makers and Indigenous storytellers Jack Manning Bancroft and Tyson Yunkaporta are inviting audiences to hit reset with Imagine, a bold, genre-defying animated feature landing in cinemas for special event screenings this January 26th across Australia. Co-created through the pandemic in an open, live Google Doc collaboration that brought together more than 400 contributors…
There’s something quietly poetic about watching Addition under the open sky. Premiering in Australia at Sydney’s Westpac OpenAir Cinema ahead of its national release on January 29th – following its successful run at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival – the film’s gentle intimacy feels amplified by its setting. Numbers may govern Grace Lisa Vandenburg’s…
Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho has never been interested in subtle allegory when reality itself is this confrontational. With The Secret Agent, his latest politically charged thriller set during the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship, the director once again fuses genre storytelling with cultural memory, paranoia and moral urgency. In a conversation with our…
Maggie Gyllenhaal isn’t interested in playing it safe. At the global trailer launch for The Bride!, the writer-director-producer spoke with infectious passion about her radical reimagining of one of cinema’s most iconic monsters, revealing a film that’s punk, romantic, mythic, deeply personal, and unapologetically loud. Here’s everything we learned about The Bride! and the bold…
Returning to a world that once redefined cinematic terror, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple doesn’t simply extend the legacy of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland’s vision – it interrogates it. Under Nia DaCosta’s direction, the film pivots away from the familiar terror of the infected and toward something colder and more unsettling: the ways…
There’s something quietly radical about a family film that trusts gentleness over noise. Set in the self-proclaimed Pumpkin Capital of the World, Grow unfolds like a story many of us remember from childhood, one that invites laughter, warmth, and the comforting belief that people, at their core, are good. Stoic farmer Dinah Little (Golda Rosheuvel,…
In Hamnet, grief isn’t a rupture so much as a reorientation – a learning to carry love in a new, altered way. Chloé Zhao’s hushed, elemental adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel traces the aftershocks of unimaginable loss through Agnes and Will Shakespeare, as the death of their son Hamnet becomes both a private wound and…
When Christy Martin exploded into the public consciousness in the 1990s, she didn’t just change the visibility of women’s boxing – she redefined what strength could look like when it refused to be contained. Christy revisits that seismic rise through the eyes of those tasked with bringing her story to the screen: Sydney Sweeney, whose…
In Christy, writer-director David Michôd turns his gaze away from the brittle myths of masculine bravado that have long defined his work, and towards a woman whose strength was forged in public, pressure and pain. The film charts the life of boxing trailblazer Christy Martin not as a sports legend alone, but as someone who…
Against the thunder of the Western Front, The Choral listens instead for something quieter – the fragile, defiant sound of people choosing to sing. Set in Ramsden, Yorkshire in 1916, the film unfolds as a community hollowed out by war attempts to hold itself together through music, recruiting boys to replace the men who have…
In Rental Family, connection is never simple – it’s negotiated, performed, and deeply felt in the spaces between what’s said and what’s withheld. Takehiro Hira and Mari Yamamoto bring quiet precision and emotional intelligence to a film that lives in those in-between moments, portraying characters shaped as much by restraint as by longing. As Brendan…
In an age defined by curated selves and digital distance, Rental Family asks a quietly radical question: what if connection – even borrowed connection – could still save us? Directed with tender restraint by Hikari and anchored by a deeply humane performance from Brendan Fraser, the film follows a drifting American actor who finds work…
Quiet, searching, and deeply felt, The History of Sound unfolds like a folk song passed carefully from hand to hand. Set in the aftermath of the First World War, Oliver Hermanus’ adaptation of Ben Shattuck’s short story traces the intimate bond between two young music students, Lionel and David, as their shared devotion to folk…
Jefferson White brings a quietly lived-in warmth to Drink and Be Merry, starring as Chet, a beleaguered bartender holding together a struggling New York dive bar in the days leading up to Christmas 2019. Stuck in a state of extended arrested development, Chet spends his nights caring for a group of misanthropic, aging regulars who…
