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- SWEET COUNTRY Q&A - BFI London Film Festival 2017
SWEET COUNTRY Q&A - BFI London Film Festival 2017
Director Warwick Thornton joined the BFI's Clare Stewart to discuss the making of his film, Sweet Country.
An Aboriginal stockman is accused of murdering a white man in Warwick Thornton's searing Australian Western. It's 1929 and segregationist policies weigh heavy in Australia's Northern Territory. Cattle-herder Sam (Hamilton Morris) is sent with his wife and niece to work for newly-arrived station owner Harry March (Ewen Leslie). But where Sam's religious boss (Sam Neill) treats them respectfully, March is institutionally racist, unhinged and abusive. When March goes on a booze-fuelled rampage, an altercation occurs and Sam shoots him in self-defence. Anticipating that frontier ‘justice' will prevail, Sam and wife Lizzie (Natassia Gorey-Furber) go on the run. Traversing the stunning MacDonnell Ranges outside Alice Springs, the chase takes them onto country where Sam, a seasoned bushman, has the upper hand. Heightening the overall sense of dread and unease, Thornton brings a vital Indigenous perspective and a striking visual imagination to this potent, revisionist epic.