Metro

‘You look good – way bigger,’ Hayley (Simone Kessell) reassures her husband, Knuck (Matt Nable), shortly before he’s released from prison. Knuck, the violent leader of elite bikie gang The Copperheads Motorcycle Club, does indeed look big. Presumably

A former US marine arrives home to find an intruder hiding there. He begins to fight off the burglar and swiftly gets the upper hand, pinning the man down and choking him. ‘Help!’ gasps the burglar. We hear a calm, disembodied voice: ‘I need your per

We need to talk about Kenny (2006). At least, that seems to be the memo going out to critics reviewing Clayton Jacobson’s follow-up feature some twelve years later, Brothers’ Nest (2018). The Guardian’s review mentions Kenny four times, positing, ‘Th

Is there such a thing as objective truth, or is it all a matter of perspective? This question permeates every fibre of The Second (Mairi Cameron, 2018), interrogated through both the film’s storyline and the particular way it unfolds and unravels bef

Australian independent filmmaker Luke Sparke cut his directorial teeth with Queensland-shot creature feature Red Billabong (2016), about two brothers and their friends battling against an ancient urban legend. His second feature, Occupation (2018), i

On the surface, Jason Raftopoulos’ debut feature, West of Sunshine (2017), is a domestic drama about a day in the life of a man doing what he has to to survive with his son by his side. In another place and time, one could see the story transposed, m

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s films are long, slow, minimalist, ponderous, ruminative and, ultimately, existential – airy art movies delivering nary an explosion in theme, plot or pyrotechnics. Across eight features – from The Small Town (1997) to The Wild Pea

It should come as no surprise that Annemarie Jacir’s Palestinian family dramedy, Wajib (2017), revolves around obligation. The title translates, after all, to ‘duty’ – in this case, the Palestinian custom that a father and son, Abu Shadi and Shadi (p

Since first emerging on the Japanese horror scene in the 1980s, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been an enduring name in film. While his style has evolved over the years, he has consistently created bold films and presented the unsettling side of genre – his ea

When, exactly, did ‘human rights’ become a dirty phrase? That’s a key question raised by Judy Rymer’s documentary Border Politics (2018), a forceful defence of the rights of people seeking refuge and asylum in Western countries that are turning incre

Whether they be mesmerising athletes or emblematic traffic conductors, graceful goose-stepping soldiers or meticulous ‘model workers’, women in North Korea have arguably received more attention in cultural expressions than their sisters in the ‘free

As the screen fades in from black in the opening of Catherine Scott’s BackTrack Boys (2018), Bernie Shakeshaft emerges as the calm centre of a storm of activity, surrounded by his mongrel mix of kelpies and border collies. The pack, working dogs in t

In many ways, Midnight Oil: 1984 (2018) serves as a culmination of several years’ collaboration between director Ray Argall and the iconic Australian band. Having worked on several videos and concert films for them from 1982 to 1986, Argall embedded

On the eve of its premiere in March, video-art work Terror Nullius (2018) – by the duo Soda_Jerk, Sydney-born sisters Dan and Dominique Angeloro – was disowned by one of its funding bodies. The Ian Potter Cultural Trust, which gave A$100,000 for the

When Graham Kennedy appeared for the last time on In Melbourne Tonight (IMT) on 23 December 1969, preeminent Nine Network newsreader Eric Pearce crowned him the ‘King of Television’. For many, it seemed like the end of an era. In taking his final bow

Few Australian films are as evocative of the time and place of their production – or of the period in which they are set – as Ken Cameron’s adaptation of Helen Garner’s award-winning novel Monkey Grip. Upon its release in the early 1980s, the film ha

Sally Storey speaks to thirteen female screen-industry practitioners to identify pitfalls and impediments on the road to gender equity in the Australian film and television landscape, as well as what steps can be taken to address them. I have eight

From its beginnings in 2013 as a single-day event, Melbourne WebFest – founded by Steinar Ellingsen, a former journalist, academic and early adopter of the form, as the creator of the award-winning 2011 documentary web series The Inland Sea: An Austr