Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country draws on the conventions of the American Western to explore the genesis of contemporary Australian racism and the generational neglect of Aboriginal people. The film stars Bryan Brown (Australia), Hamilton Morris (“Gideon”), Thomas M. Wright (Everest), Ewen Leslie (The Daughter), Natassia Gorey-Furber, Gibson John, Matt Day (“Rake”), Anni Finsterer (Teenage Kicks), Treymayne Doolan, Trevon Doolan, and Sam Neill (Jurassic Park).
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-defense, he and his wife, Lizzie, go on the run as a posse gathers to hunt him down.
The film will open in theaters on April 6, 2018 in New York (IFC Center) and Los Angeles (The Landmark).
Directed by Warwick Thornton and written by Steven McGregor and David Tranter, Sweet Country had its world premiere at the 2017 Venice Film Festival where Warwick won a Special Jury Prize. The film then went on to win the coveted Platform prize at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival as well as winning Best Film at the Adelaide Film Festival and the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. The film was previously screened at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
Sam, a middle-aged Aboriginal man, works for a preacher in the outback of Australia’s Northern Territory. When Harry, a bitter war veteran, moves into a neighbouring outpost, the preacher sends Sam and his family to help Harry renovate his cattle yards. But Sam’s relationship with the cruel and ill-tempered Harry quickly deteriorates, culminating in a violent shootout in which Sam kills Harry in self-defence. As a result, Sam becomes a wanted criminal for the murder of a white man, and is forced to flee with his wife across the deadly outback, through glorious but harsh desert country. A hunting party led by the local lawman Sergeant Fletcher is formed to track Sam down. But as the true details of the killing start to surface, the community begins to question whether justice is really being served.