''Sweet Country'' is a 2017 Australian

drama Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been ...

film, directed by

Warwick Thornton Warwick Thornton (born 1970) is an Australian film director, screenwriter and cinematographer. His debut feature film '' Samson and Delilah'' won the Caméra d'Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and the award for Best Film at the Asia Pacific S ...

. Set in 1929 in the sparsely populated

outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a ...

of the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory shares its borders with Western Aus ...

and based on a series of true events, it tells a harsh story against the backdrop of a divided society (between the white settlers and

Aboriginal Australians Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Island ...

) in the

interwar period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second World War. The interwar period was relative ...

in Australia. It was first screened in the main competition section of the

74th Venice International Film Festival The 74th annual Venice International Film Festival was held from 30 August to 9 September 2017. The jury president was announced as the actress Annette Bening on 5 July 2017. '' Downsizing'', directed by Alexander Payne, was selected to open th ...

in September 2017 and after winning the Special Jury Prize award there, went on to win several awards internationally.

Plot

Sam Kelly is a middle-aged Aboriginal farm worker in the outback of Australia's

some time after the end of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighti ...

. His employer, Fred Smith, a kindly

preacher A preacher is a person who delivers sermons or homilies on religious topics to an assembly of people. Less common are preachers who preach on the street, or those whose message is not necessarily religious, but who preach components such as a ...

, agrees to lend Sam his wife Lizzie and niece Lucy to a bitter, abusive, and

alcoholic Alcoholism is, broadly, any drinking of alcohol that results in significant mental or physical health problems. Because there is disagreement on the definition of the word ''alcoholism'', it is not a recognized diagnostic entity. Predomin ...

veteran of World War I named Harry March on a neighbouring farm to renovate the latter's paddock fences. After sending Sam out to round up some cattle, Harry rapes Lizzie, and threatens to skin her and Sam and rape Lucy if Lizzie tells Sam. Sam's relationship with Harry quickly deteriorates. Later, Harry visits the farm on which Sam works looking for a runaway Aboriginal youth named Philomac, who had escaped after Harry had chained him up to stop him from stealing. Harry fires rifle shots into the house then kicks in the door, leading Sam (who is inside with Lizzie) to pick up a gun and kill Harry in self-defence. Sam goes on the run from the law, setting out with Lizzie across the

. The manhunt for Sam is led by Sergeant Fletcher, who has to contend with the heat, venomous animals, and Aboriginal warriors. Eventually Sam and Lizzie return to turn themselves in, while Fletcher has a

gallows A gallows (or scaffold) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended (i.e., hung) or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sacks ...

constructed and tries to influence the judge who comes to the town to conduct the trial. More details emerge and Sam is acquitted. As he leaves the town in a

horse and buggy ] A horse and buggy (in American English) or horse and carriage (in British English and American English) refers to a light, simple, two-person carriage of the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, drawn usually by one or sometimes by two ho ...

, he is killed by a

sniper A sniper is a military/paramilitary marksman who engages targets from positions of concealment or at distances exceeding the target's detection capabilities. Snipers generally have specialized training and are equipped with high-precision r ...

Cast

* Hamilton Morris as Sam Kelly *

Sam Neill Sir Nigel John Dermot "Sam" Neill (born 14 September 1947) is a New Zealand actor. Neill's near-50 year career has included leading roles in both dramas and blockbusters. Considered an "international leading man", he has been regarded as one o ...

as Fred Smith *

Bryan Brown Bryan Neathway Brown AM (born 23 June 1947) is an Australian actor. He has performed in over eighty film and television projects since the late 1970s, both in his native Australia and abroad. Notable films include ''Breaker Morant'' (1980), ' ...

as Sergeant Fletcher * Thomas M. Wright as Mick Kennedy *

Matt Day Matthew Day (born 28 September 1971) is an Australian actor and filmmaker. Early life Day was born in Melbourne, Victoria. When he was 11 years old, he went to live in the United States with his father, a newspaper correspondent, where he be ...

as Judge Taylor * Ewen Leslie as Harry March * Natassia Gorey-Furber as Lizzie Kelly * Gibson John as Archie * Anni Finsterer as Nell * Shanica Cole as Lucy * Tremayne and Trevon Doolan as Philomac * Luka Magdeline Cole as Olive

Origin

The storyline of the film was inspired by the true story of an

Australian Aboriginal Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the Torres Strait Islands ...

man named Wilaberta (or Wilberta or Willaberta) Jack in 1929 and his shooting of ANZAC veteran Harry Henty. Scriptwriter for the film, David Tranter, had previously made a short documentary of the story named ''Willaberta Jack'', which had been nominated for Best Documentary in the Winnipeg Indigenous Film Festival in 2007. Willaberta Jack was his great-uncle and they lived north of

Alice Springs Alice Springs ( aer, Mparntwe) is the third-largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Known as Stuart until 31 August 1933, the name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd (''née'' Al ...

. The Northern Territory was officially part of the colony of New South Wales from 1825 to 1863; it then became part of the

colony of South Australia In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

from 1863 to 1 January 1911, when it became a separate

federal territory A federal territory is an administrative division under the direct and usually exclusive jurisdiction of a federation's national government. A federal territory is a part of a federation, but not a part of any federated state. The states constit ...

, and remains so today.

Themes and genre

The film is an example of the "

meat pie Western Australian Western, also known as meat pie Western or kangaroo Western, is a broad genre of Western-style films or TV series set in the Australian outback or "the bush". Films about bushrangers (sometimes called bushranger films) are included i ...

", a name used to describe Western-style films set in the Australian

, although set in more recent times than most in the genre, and rather than tell a simple narrative, it also exposes severe racism unapologetically. One reviewer muses on the label "neo-Western", which invokes a very old genre (including the classic Western doomed hero character) as well as a "sense of newness and revival". Set in outback

about ten years after World War I, rather than the earlier colonial or pre-federation period of Australia's history of many traditional westerns, the film deals with the effects of the war on its white inhabitants, the extreme

racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race over another. It may also mean prejudice, d ...

and

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

which existed at that time and how Indigenous workers were used to build the country, and personal morality. It also shows a world where women have little power. Fred is a White character who shows kindness and morality, but even the worst villain (Harry) is also shown as a victim of life in the trenches of the war, who has returned damaged. The film is more than just a story or period piece; it aims to help Australians to understand their history and its legacy in the present time. The characters and story play out against the character of the harsh yet visually stunning country, and the

cinematography Cinematography (from ancient Greek κίνημα, ''kìnema'' "movement" and γράφειν, ''gràphein'' "to write") is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography. Cinematographers use a lens to fo ...

is an essential element of the film.

Production

The film was shot largely at Ooraminna Station, a cattle station about south of

in the

, not far from the

Simpson Desert The Simpson Desert is a large area of dry, red sandy plain and dunes in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland in central Australia. It is the fourth-largest Australian desert, with an area of . The desert is underlain by the ...

. A town built on the station for the film '' The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson'' (directed by

Leah Purcell Leah Maree Purcell (born 14 August 1970) is an Aboriginal Australian stage and film actress, playwright, film director, and novelist. She made her film debut in 1999, appearing in Paul Fenech's ''Somewhere in the Darkness'', which led to role ...

), which included a police station and general store, was used for the town scenes. Many cast members were Aboriginal Australians and locals from Alice Springs were employed as extras.

Reception

The film was well received by critics and audiences alike, winning the Audience Award at the 2017

Adelaide Film Festival The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF, formerly ADLFF) is film festival usually held for two weeks in mid-October in cinemas in Adelaide, South Australia. Originally presented biennially in March from 2003, since 2013 AFF has been held in October ...

. On

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the film holds an approval rating of 96% based on 91 reviews, with an average rating of 8.21/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "''Sweet Country'' makes brilliant use of the Australian outback as the setting for a hard-hitting story that satisfies as a character study as well as a sociopolitical statement". On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc D ...

, the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". It received positive reviews from many reviewers, with one calling it Thornton's second masterpiece, and one of the best Westerns and Australian films of the century.

Film festivals and awards

''Sweet Country'' premiered at the 74th Venice Film Festival on 6 September 2017, where it won the Special Jury Prize award. Shown in the Platform section at the

2017 Toronto International Film Festival The 42nd annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from 7 to 17 September 2017. There were fourteen programmes, with the Vanguard and City to City programmes both being retired from previous years, with the total number of films down b ...

, it won the

Platform Prize The Platform Prize is an annual film award, presented by the Toronto International Film Festival to films of "high artistic merit that also demonstrate a strong directorial vision."Adelaide Film Festival The Adelaide Film Festival (AFF, formerly ADLFF) is film festival usually held for two weeks in mid-October in cinemas in Adelaide, South Australia. Originally presented biennially in March from 2003, since 2013 AFF has been held in October ...

and the Best Feature Film at the 2017

Asia Pacific Screen Awards The Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA) is an international cultural initiative overseen by the Asia Pacific Screen Academy and headquartered in Australia. In order to realise UNESCO's goals of promoting and preserving the different cultures t ...

Accolades

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sweet Country 2017 films 2017 Western (genre) films Australian Western (genre) films Films about Aboriginal Australians Films about slavery Films about racism Films about race and ethnicity Films set in the Outback Venice Special Jury Prize winners 2010s English-language films