What’s On [ACT]: Paradise Road screening and Q&A with Bruce Beresford and Ross Edwards

Cate Blanchett in Paradise Road.

Renowned Australian composer Ross Edwards will join celebrated director Bruce Beresford on stage at the NFSA for a Q&A following a screening of Beresford’s 1997 film Paradise Road on Sunday, October 30 at 2pm.

This powerful and moving cinematic testament to the power of music, following a group of foreign women – including an educated British musician (Glenn Close), an Australian nurse (Cate Blanchett) and an American socialite (Julianna Margulies) – leave Singapore during World War II.

When their boat is attacked, they wash up in Japanese-occupied Sumatra and end up in a POW camp. Conditions there are grim, with prisoners brutally punished for minor violations. But the captives soon decide to form a singing group that just may lift these very different women out of misery.

This event is co-presented with the Flowers of Peace project, supported by the Australian War Memorial, which will premiere The POW Requiem on 29 October and will feature music by Margaret Dryburgh and Norah Chambers, who founded the choir.

Tickets and details here