The Drover's Wife (15) at South Hill Park

Directed by Leah Purcell | Drama | English/Aboriginal | 109 mins | Australia | 2020

On a remote homestead in the Australian outback, a lonely bush woman runs the family farm and raises her children while her husband is away. The film tackles issues of race, sexual violence and the low-level simmering cruelty that is a fact of life for those hardy individuals who make a life in the bush in the late 19th century. And there are few more resilient than Molly Johnson, heavily pregnant, with a gaggle of kids at her heel and a shotgun ready to train on anyone who comes too close to her shack. Then she meets Yadaka, an Indigenous man on the run from the police, and an uneasy trust built on shared secrets grows between them.

This is a bold retelling of a famous short story written primarily for a white audience. By opening up Henry Lawson’s original yarn, Leah Purcell broadens its horizons and makes it bigger and more holistic, incorporating modern ways of thinking about racism and bias in Australia. As she aptly describes her excellent film, it’s “a contemporary form of Dreaming.”

“the engrossing thriller is admirably ambitious” THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Trailer