Eric Bana in Blueback.

Cinema Australia was recently treated to an early look at Robert Connolly’s Blueback and we’re thrilled to report that the film is a triumph.

Perth audiences will be treated to the Australian premiere of the new film when it opens Lotterywest Films as part of Perth Festival on November 21.

Connelly’s stunning big-screen adaptation of Tim Winton’s beloved book stars Mia Wasikowska, llsa Fogg, Radha Mitchell and Eric Bana.

Blueback follows the story of Abby, a young girl living with her environmentalist mother on the pristine southern coast. While diving Abby forms a bond with a magnificent wild blue groper living in her local reef. Realising that the fish is under threat, Abby takes inspiration from her activist Mum and takes on poachers to  help protect the ocean that she so loves.

Blueback is a potent and moving tale of family, friendship, connection to the ocean and the power we all have to make a difference.

Blueback leads a 19-week line-up of the best new local and international films including two other Australian films, You Can Go Now and The Giants.

Richard Bell.

You Can Go Now follows First Nations artist Richard Bell who proclaims himself to be an ‘activist masquerading as an artist’. His confrontational work and attitudes have stirred the Australian art world while being lauded internationally, taking him from a childhood in a rural Queensland shack to the lofty halls of the Tate Modern. Schooled in the rough and tumble politics of Redfern and the Canberra Tent Embassy, his work challenges the institutions of colonisation in Australia and asserts the rights of First Nations people around the world.

You Can Go Now traces the course of Richard’s remarkable career as an artist and provocateur, while also highlighting his strong ongoing commitment to the politics of Aboriginal emancipation and self-determination.

Documentary filmmaker Larissa Behrendt has assembled a supporting cast of artists, academics, musicians and more to flesh out this journey of over 50 years. Richard’s often collaborative art practice is the lens through which to examine Aboriginal and First nations activism in Australia and beyond, how much it has achieved and how much is yet to be done.

Bob Brown in The Giants. 

The Giants explores the intertwined fates of trees and humans in this poetic portrait of environmentalist Bob Brown, drawing on his 50 years of inspiring social and political activism.

From the Franklin campaign for Tasmania’s last wild river, to today’s battle for the Tarkine rainforest, we hear Bob’s story interwoven with the extraordinary life cycle of Australia’s giant trees, bought to the screen with stunning cinematography and immersive animated forest landscapes.

From the team that made Freeman – the most watched documentary of 2020 on Australian TV – The Giants aims to ignite a conversation about the right of the forest to exist, and to inspire us all to save it.

Lotterywest Films runs from 21 November 2022 – 9 April 2023. Details here. 

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