The Nightingale

In Tasmania in 1825, a young Irish convict walks into the bush to settle what was done to her and her family. Her guide is an Aboriginal tracker. The film deliberately refuses to make revenge satisfying. What the two share is that the colonial order does not count them as people; the narrative sets those two histories side by side and never turns the violence into spectacle. It is Jennifer Kent's second film. The narrow frame keeps the bush closed in and pressing. A real warning: the film contains more than one rape and the killing of an infant, all shown directly. People walked out of the Venice screening. Do not come to this unprepared.