NSW-based Bunya Productions for winning the Special Jury Prize with Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country at the 2017 Venice Film Festival.
Following its world premiere screening at the festival, the Create NSW supported film received a standing ovation and has garnered outstanding international critical reviews, and won the Premio Bisato d’Oro award, the Venice Critic’s award for Best Film.
Directed by Warwick Thornton, recipient of the Camera d’Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival for his debut feature Samson and Delilah, the period western is a stunning cinematic vision and soundscape set in the desert of the magnificent MacDonnell Ranges around Alice Springs in Central Australia.
Inspired by real events and starring Hamilton Morris, Sam Neill, Bryan Brown, Ewen Leslie, Thomas M. Wright, Natassia Gorey-Furber, Anni Finsterer, Matt Day and introducing, Gibson John, Tremayne Doolan and Trevon Doolan, Sweet Country is set in the 1920s on the Northern Territory frontier – where justice itself is put on trial.
Bunya Productions’ and Producer of Sweet Country Greer Simpkin said:
“To have worked with our close friends David Tranter, Steven McGregor and Warwick Thornton on this film has been a joy. To have this potent story about our country’s history shared and honoured internationally is both humbling and empowering.”
Sweet Country is produced by Bunya Productions, with major production investment and development support from Screen Australia’s Indigenous Department, in association with the South Australian Film Corporation, Create NSW, Screen Territory and the Adelaide Film Festival. International sales are being handled by Memento and the Australian release by Transmission Films.