Sweet Country (2017)

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Movie
German title Sweet Country
Original title Sweet Country
Country of production Australia
original language English
Publishing year 2017
length 113 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Warwick Thornton
script Steven McGregor ,
David Tranter
production David Jowsey ,
Greer Simpkin
camera Dylan River ,
Warwick Thornton
cut Nick Meyers
occupation

Sweet Country is an Australian adventure crime drama directed by Warwick Thornton , which premiered on September 6, 2017 at the Venice Film Festival and was released in German cinemas on September 27, 2018.

action

1929 in the outback of the Northern Territory in Australia. Sam Kelly, a middle-aged Aboriginal man, works for the kind preacher Fred Smith.

War veteran Harry Marsh buys a neighborhood farm and asks Smith to have Sam repair a cattle fence with his wife and niece. But Harry turns out to be a sick and embittered man, and his relationship with Sam quickly escalates. He makes Sam work hard, rapes his wife and sends all three back without giving them food.

That night, the young Philomac fled Harry's farm and Harry suspects him to be in the Smith farm house, which only houses Sam and his wife. Harry shoots inside the house several times, and when he breaks the door, Sam fires Smith's rifle at him to save his own life. Harry Marsh dies in front of Smith's house. Because he has killed a white man, Sam is forced to flee with his wife into the hostile outback.

A group led by Sergeant Fletcher tries to track down Sam there, but the clever and experienced Bushman always manages to cover his tracks. When Fletcher and his men cross the path of a group of Aboriginal people armed with spears, one of Fletcher's men is killed. After an argument with Fletcher, Smith returns to his farm. After all, Fletcher rides alone on a salt lake and would have died of thirst there if Sam hadn't brought him water. When the health of his pregnant wife is in danger, however, Sam finally gives up and surrenders.

There is a trial in the city. Judge Taylor finds out from interviews with witnesses that Sam acted in self-defense and he is acquitted. When Sam wants to go back home, he is shot by a man who practices vigilante justice while leaving town.

production

Directed by Warwick Thornton and written by Steven McGregor and David Tranter . Concerning the message of his film, the director said that the exploitation of the indigenous people as cheap labor is rooted in colonial thinking: gentrification, racism and the oppression and neglect that has continued for generations. Thornton says he sees himself as a filmmaker in the tradition of indigenous narrative culture, in which the present is told about the past and the future.

In South Australia , the film was shot at Lake Gairdner and in Lake Gairdner National Park , in the vicinity of the Eyre Peninsula , in the Simpson Desert and in the outback . In the Northern Territory , the film was shot in Alice Springs , 40 kilometers south of the Great Northern Railway station in Ooraminna, in the MacDonnell Ranges , the community of Trephina Gorge and in the Trephina Gorge Nature Park.

The film premiered on September 6, 2017 at the 74th Venice Film Festival and was presented in the Platform section of the Toronto International Film Festival from September 8 . In October 2017 the film was shown in official competition at the London Film Festival . A theatrical release in the USA took place on April 6, 2018. In July 2018, the film was shown in the Spotlight section at the Munich Film Festival . The film was released in German cinemas on September 27, 2018. The film is offered in Germany on the Grandfilm platform at Vimeo . From FilmFernsehFonds Bayern received Sweet Country distribution support in the amount of 20,000 euros.

reception

Age ratings and reviews

In the USA, the film received an R rating from the MPAA , which corresponds to a rating of 17 and over. In Germany, the film was approved for ages 12 and up . The statement of reasons for the release states: “Occasionally there are scenes of violence and killing. Although these scenes are emotionally intense, they are in no way sensational or end in themselves, but are rather integrated into the plot. In addition, violence is not glorified, but portrayed as negative and repulsive. Due to their psychosocial developmental level, children from the age of 12 are able to understand this: They can place the scenes in the context of the story, question them critically and process them without being overwhelmed. "

The film has so far won over 95 percent of Rotten Tomatoes critics and received an average rating of 8.3 out of a possible 10 points. From the 20th Annual Golden Tomato Awards went Sweet Country emerged as the best Australian film.

Benno Feichter from Austria 1 says that Sweet Country is a film with subtle nuances that deals with topics without a moral club. Warwick Thornton breaks his big story arc again and again and anticipates the fate of the characters in individual images, says Feichter.

Irina Blum from Cineman.ch explains that although the film is set in the 1920s, it can also be seen as a timeless document of history that repeats itself over and over again. The starting position has almost the potential of a nerve-wracking thriller, Blum continues, but director Warwick Thornton has something different in mind with his western . "The focus in Sweet Country is less on the dramatic than on the soft nuances: Although Sweet Country is more western than thriller , the tension is never neglected thanks to some unexpected plot twists - in a subtle way." A convincing cast throughout the band as well as a careful figure drawing ensured that the consistent but nevertheless shocking end echoed, according to Blum, and as a piece of contemporary history that can leave a bittersweet aftertaste despite all the horror.

Patrick Seyboth from epd Film thinks that Thornton and his cameraman Dylan River called up the motifs of the Wild West visually , in wide landscapes with glowing colors that make the heat almost physically felt. Thornton emphasizes the effect of the visual by dispensing with music, and he emphasizes the pictures atmospherically with natural noises. In the almost completely empty scenes in a salt desert, he let his actors drift even more radically into a sphere of existential forlornness, says Seyboth. The highlight of this film, however, is how it takes up indigenous traditions in its formal structure, uses them in the context of the western genre and combines both in a virtuoso and coherent way: “In the narrative culture of the Aborigines , the past, present and future coexist more closely than one another one after the other, as we are used to. The stylistic device of the short inserts, which gradually turn out to be flashbacks or flashbacks, is rooted in this tradition and builds a bridge to a central motif of the film: reading the tracks. Because again and again it is about how the past affects the present and how the now is emerging. "

Awards

Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2017

  • Award for best film

Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards 2018

  • Nomination for best film

Venice International Film Festival 2017

Jerusalem Film Festival 2018

  • Nomination for Best Picture (Warwick Thornton)

London Film Festival 2017

  • Nomination for Best Film in Official Competition (Warwick Thornton)

Toronto International Film Festival 2017

  • Awarded the Platform Prize (Warwick Thornton)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for Sweet Country . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 181906 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ a b "Sweet Country" in Venice. In: oe1.orf.at. Retrieved December 2, 2017 .
  3. ↑ a b http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-27/sweet-country-filmmaker-warwick-thornton-returns-to-the-desert/8061544
  4. ↑ https://www.creativespirits.info/resources/movies/sweet-country#axzz4oznQWCPj
  5. ^ "Warwick Thornton - Sweet Country". La Biennale di Venezia, accessed on August 15, 2017. http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/2017/program-cinema-2017/warwick-thornton-sweet-country .
  6. ↑ Toronto International Film Festival 2017. Official Film Schedule In: tiff.net. Retrieved on August 23, 2017 (PDF; 852 kB)
  7. ↑ Kate Erbland: TIFF Announces Platform Lineup, Including 'The Death of Stalin', 'Euphoria' and 'Brad's Status' In: indiewire.com, August 3, 2017.
  8. ↑ Sweet Country. In: filmfest-muenchen.de. Retrieved June 12, 2018.
  9. ↑ Start dates in Germany . In: insidekino.com. Retrieved June 5, 2018.
  10. ↑ Björn Becher: Starting today: Stream one of the best films of 2019 and support the cinemas. In: filmstarts.de, April 3, 2020.
  11. ↑ Sweet Country on the VoD page of Grandfilm on Vimeo. (Video)
  12. ↑ https://www.fff-bayern.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Vergabemeldung/FFF_Vergabem nearly_Film_Juli_2018_final.pdf
  13. ↑ Sweet Country. In: comingsoon.net. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  14. ^ Reasons for approval for Sweet Country In: Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
  15. ↑ Sweet Country In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved May 4, 2018.
  16. ↑ https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/best-movies-2018-australia/
  17. ↑ https://www.cineman.ch/movie/2017/SweetCountry/review.html
  18. ↑ https://www.epd-film.de/filmkritiken/sweet-country
  19. ↑ http://variety.com/2017/film/asia/sweet-country-newton-asia-pacific-screen-awards-1202622335/
  20. ↑ AACTA Reveals Record-Breaking Number of Feature Films in Competition for 8th AACTA Awards. In: aacta.org. Retrieved August 14, 2018.
  21. ↑ Nancy Tartaglione: Venice Film Festival Winners In: deadline.com, September 9, 2017.
  22. ↑ Sweet Country. In: jff.org. Retrieved July 22, 2018.
  23. ↑ http://variety.com/2017/film/news/toronto-film-festival-audience-award-three-billboards-1202561527/