It’s time for a new New Wave in the film world

Government funding bodies are lazy and decadent, says industry veteran Michael Thornhill but in a piece that first appeared in Encore, Ed Gibbs begs to differ.

I vividly remember the time I first saw Animal Kingdom, David Michod’s breathtaking labour-of-love feature debut. The press screening was half empty, despite the film winning the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance just months earlier, in 2010. Yet its superb performances, stylistic flourishes and overall polish left me speechless. Could this really be a feature debut, an Australian one at that, I wondered, almost out loud? It seemed too good to be true.

I had a similar response when viewing Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown the following year and, just a few weeks ago, Kim Mordaunt’s beautiful feature, The Rocket. Like Warwick Thornton’s Cannes-winning Samson and Delilah before it, all these films point to a screen agency culture backing a fresh breed of film-makers (albeit ones well honed, in their thirties and forties).

The world has duly taken note.