Hugo Weaving and Ryan Kwanten begin shooting on Ivan Sen’s Mystery Road
Hugo Weaving and Ryan Kwanten will appear in a new film by the director of Toomelah which has begun shooting in central Queensland.
Mystery Road, written and directed by Ivan Sen will also star Aaron Pederson in the lead role of a detective who returns to his outback home town to solve the murder of a teenage Indigenous girl.
Sen, known for his low budget films, will be DOP and editor on the film. Produced by David Jowsey, who produced Mad Bastards and Satellite Boy, the film will be released locally through Management of Doubt with international sales handled by Arclight, and Arclight’s Michael Wrenn executive producing.
Sen has assembled an ensemble cast that also includes Jack Thompson, Tony Barry, Tasma Walton, Damian Walshe-Howling, Robert Mammone and newcomers Trisha Whitton and Siobhan Binge.
Jowsey said: “Ivan Sen is one of Australia’s most gifted filmmakers who, with Mystery Road, has the opportunity to apply his prodigious talent to a broader canvas. Ivan’s screenplay strikes a distinctive balance between its unabashedly genre roots as a murder mystery and its perceptive cultural insights.”
The film has been financed with assistance from Screen Australia, Screen Queensland and the ABC.
Hopefully this is better than Toomelah, which is the perfect cure for insomnia.
How on earth does this get Screen Australia funding when the Australian “distributor” has never released a single film before?
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Any more info about Management of Doubt?
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Dean asked “How on earth does this get Screen Australia funding when the Australian “distributor” has never released a single film before?”
The rules is that the local distributor must be ‘appropriate’. I suspect ‘Management of Doubt’ passes this test because … and I’m guessing here … that ‘Management of Doubt’ is just a brand-name or spin-off of Arclight – who do have plenty of experience.
That’s just a guess, based on the fact that the its principle appears to be Michael Wren, who joined Arclight only a couple of months ago.
It’s curious though – a search of the Australian Business Register doesn’t bring up a single company or business in the entire of Australia with the name of ‘Management of Doubt’ .. or even doing business under that name.
Nor does a search of the Australian Trademark Register reveal any company with that name as a registered trademark.
So I’m resorting to guessing. Sometimes the online databases are a little out of date … but it should be right.
Mac
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Hey Mac, I suspected it was Wrenn/Arclight, but if so would have expected something more than a passing mention in a minor press release
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I know of films that have had their funding applications to Screen Australia knocked back because they either did not have a distributor OR the distributor they wanted to go with were not considered suitable (ie, haven’t released enough films theatrically).
This is very unusual.
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Its not unusual at all…in this industry some filmmakers are pushed forward and others aren’t, you can be a very talented director, writer, actor etc…and struggle all your creative life to get any forward momentum. SA rules apply to most filmmakers but not to all, Julia Leigh was able to go straight to a feature film as a director, no shorts, no doco’s..nothing. For 99.9% of filmmakers that is a total impossibility and SA don’t have to offer up one shred of rationale as to how they arrive at that decision. You are either picked and push forward or utterly neglected..its just the way we roll..and it sucks. Hence we just have enormous brain drain of talent and are very convincingly turning it a very stupid culture.
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“Turning into”..a very stupid culture (duuh)
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