As a 2009 Australian feature, LUCKY COUNTRY is now eligible for nomination in the 2009 Inside Film Awards.
The Inside Film Awards (IF Awards) are the people’s choice awards for Australian films. Throughout the year audiences across Australia register their scores on score sheets distributed at film festivals and screenings or via the IF Awards website. The IF Awards give Australian audiences the chance to play critic by rating Australian films between 1 and 5 (5 being the highest).
Winners are determined by the OVERALL average score, NOT by the number of scores received.
Scoring for the 2009 Inside Film Awards are now open.
If you haven’t already voted for LUCKY COUNTRY, you can vote for the film here.
If you’re not already registered click on the “Login To Vote” and then the “Register Here” button
Director Kriv Stenders debates the so-called ‘bleakness’ in Lucky Country with online mag Eureka Street.
‘I wouldn’t say it’s bleak’, says Stenders. ‘It’s realistic. The film is a morality tale. It’s about the evil men are capable of. We set out to make something entertaining and engaging, with a lot of betrayal and subterfuge and psychological cat and mouse games. That requires a certain aggressive tone and a certain darkness.’
Read the full article here.
SBS Review
By Peter Galvin
Dark and sober Lucky Country is not pretty. There is a body count here and the violence when it comes, is swift and ugly. Still, for all of its bloodshed and its mordant tone of last options (all bad) it is also really quite thrilling.
In Lucky Country the land is savaged by greed, and overrun by technological progress (the coming of the railway), meanwhile pioneers are forgotten, the bonds of family and loyalty tested and corrupted.
Lucky Country demonstrates Director Kriv Stenders gifts: a skill with atmosphere and a talent for eliciting lived-in performances. With Lucky Country he proves he can handle the knotty twists and curves of a genuine thriller and deliver them in a way that’s both scary and original.
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Urban Cinefile Review
By Andrew L. Urban
Immersive in its mood of early Australian bush life, Lucky Country is a fable of this land as well as a story in which the best instincts of mankind barely survive the ravages of fate, nature and humanity itself. Muscular and poetic all at once, this is an intense drama which pits pride and greed against hope and despair – and is proud of the irony and ambiguity reflected in the title.
Lucky Country is driven by a purpose and is superbly executed.
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Last night on At The Movies Margaret Pomeranz gave us a wonderful, 4 star review. Here’s a snippet of what she had to say:
“There is something intensely Australian about this film, it’s as if it’s seeking to penetrate some essence of where we’ve come from and who we are. Andy Cox’s screenplay is both poetic and dramatic.
Performances are universally impressive, the children, HANNA MANGAN-LAWRENCE and TOBY WALLACE are really outstanding. Kriv Stenders has brought an appropriate leanness to the direction and visually the muted palette from cinematographer Jules O’Loughlin is just perfect for the times it depicts.
This film made such a strong connection with me, I responded to it emotionally, intellectually, and I was incredibly moved by it.”
Film Link Review
By Julian Shaw
Clearly hungry for a broader canvas, director Kriv Stenders now takes on the unfamiliar world of early twentieth century Australia, but his keen eye for savagely real characterisations and men in crises remains unblemished. Aden Young (in a haunting performance sure to re-establish his big screen credentials) is Nat, a father with a young family, dislocated physically and spiritually in the outback, who is swooped upon from all sides after rumours of gold begin to swirl around his log cabin. Young Toby Wallace, as Nat’s son Tom, becomes the backbone of the film, and it’s a sterling, remarkably mature performance which glues the ensemble together.
Lucky Country is a downright bizarre, blood-smeared opus that provides yet more evidence of a real-deal auteur at work on our shores.
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Empire Review
By Ed Gibbs
Director Kriv Stenders (whose Boxing Day, Blacktown and The Illustrated Family Doctor deserved bigger audiences) tackles the heat-soaked harshness of this Great Southern Land with similarly unsettling realism in this creepy psychological drama.
Not since The Proposition has there been a period drama that so vividly depicts the hell of settlement with such menace.
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Matt’s Movie Review
A psychological western set during Australia’s formative years, Lucky Country explores the brutality of man when lured by the temptation of greed.
While recent Australian films have taken advantage of the sprawling landscapes which make the outback, director Kriv Stenders stays away from picturesque scenery and opts for the dense bushland as his backdrop: uncompromising, large and consuming, swallowing its inhabitants whole. It is there where we find a family torn apart and living only on the faith that God will deliver them from their affliction.
Stalkingly building up the tension to a fever pitch, Stenders unleashes hell when a closely guarded secret is uncovered, pitting child against parent; friend against friend. And just as Paul Thomas Anderson promised that There Will Be Blood, so too does Stenders deliver on the bloodshed as the dread of murder and rape haunts every dimly lit frame, proving that the depths mankind will succumb to for the attainment of wealth is the most tragic sin of all.
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So the secret’s finally out. Aden Young, actor and star of Lucky Country, has long had a large and much loved collection of garden gnomes.
We did try to keep it on the downlow but Elissa Blake from the SMH spied them, then Triple J breakfast picked up on it and that was that.
I don’t know about you but I’m dying to see his short film on the subject.