the Curb

Alana Hunt is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores history through a forensic approach to research. Her work mines the history of Australia, often utilising archival material to navigate the violent, colonial past.  In her 2023 work, Surveilling a Crime Scene, Hunt navigates the materialisation of non-Indigenous life on Miriwoong Country in the town of Kununurra. That exploration br...

Vonne Patiag has been forging a path in film and TV as a writer, director, and actor on shows like Halal Gurls and The Unusual Suspects , and films like Here Out West , Too Many Ethnics , and his new short film Homo , which has its world premiere at the Revelation Perth International Film Festival on 10 July 2026. As you'll hear in the following interview, I found the film utterly beautiful and sw...

Filmmaker Jess Londono's short film e-Mum is a slightly satirical, completely engaging exploration on motherhood in the age of AI. Emma lives a solitary life with no partner or kids, a point of contention between her estranged mum and her. As an intrusion on Emma's life, her mum delivers an android daughter for her to look after. In Emma's eyes, this AI creation is a mere tool, something that exis...

Lint is the first feature film from Boorloo-Perth polymath David West. It's a hyper independent West Aussie film about Iris (Melissa Coci) and Susan (Courtney Swartz), colleagues who work at an environmentally friendly dry cleaning company who conspire to bring down their sleazy boss Vincent (Tom Camp). Along the way, they get distracted by dinners with friends, tennis lessons, and more, all the w...

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West Aussie filmmaker Miley Tunnecliffe makes the shift from shorts to features with her debut feature length film Proclivitas. This familial horror-drama film features Clare (an impressive grounded performance from Rose Riley), an addict in recovery who returns to her hometown to tidy up her mother's house after her sudden death. Returning home, Clare connects with her old flame Jerry (a superb G...

Sophie Hyde's films have often explored identity, self-realisation, and the path to finding your place in this messy, mucked up world. 52 Tuesdays sees a child growing to understand the gender transition that one of her parents is going through, while Good Luck to You, Leo Grande sees Emma Thompson's 55-year-old Nancy reclaim her sexuality. In Jimpa , Sophie's finest and most mature film yet, we f...

Filmmaker Jordan Giusti's Floodland is an impactful documentary that takes audiences to the flood-prone landscape of Lismore, NSW. Thousands of people call the region home, and yet, due to the climate crisis and government inaction, they find themselves in horrifying situations where their homes are swept away, they lose friends and family, and pets and livestock end up as collateral damage for an...

Haydn Green has been the creative force of Hear My Eyes , a sonic-visual, hybrid experience which blends film and music in creatively intriguing and boundary pushing ways. As the founder and artistic director of Hear My Eyes , Haydn reaches out to contemporary musicians to craft new scores for pre-existing cinema. Collaborations include Sampa the Great rescoring Céline Sciamma's Girlhood , The Mur...

This interview has been a long while in the can, waiting to be published. This in depth discussion with filmmaker, creative, and fearless storyteller Lucy Coleman was recorded early in 2025 and due to reasons you'll hear in the long intro (recorded in the foyer of Luna Cinemas Leederville, a home away from home), it's now finally being released into the world. Lucy Coleman is the creative vision b...

One of the standout films from the 2026 batch of Flickerfest shorts has been Damien Power's docu-drama Return of the Champ . With this excellent hybrid experience, the stand up comedian turned director spins the cameras on his relationship with his brother, Will Power, a world champion and Indy 500 winner, who spins a story about a crash that he once witnessed. It's a story that Damien hadn't hear...

Addition is the latest film from director Marcelle Lunam and actor Teresa Palmer. It's a screen adaptation of the novel by Toni Jordan, telling the story of Grace, a woman who counts everything because numbers hold her world together. Yet, when she meets Seamus (Joe Dempsie), her world is thrown upside and her ordered life becomes disordered. In the following interviews, recorded ahead of Addition...

Lianne Mackessy is a multi-hyphenate creative whose work spans from acting in front of the camera in films like 2025's Smoke, to writing and directing her own work, like her 2026 drama short film Tuesday Tuesday.  Making its world premiere at FlickerFest 2026, Tuesday Tuesday follows a young support worker, played by Jillian Nguyen, who spends a final day with her long-time client, played by...

Stellan Skarsgård as Gustav Borg in Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value is a man who is searching for connection with the two daughters, Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) he effectively abandoned when he split from their just deceased mother.  The once storied director turns up at the funeral for his ex-wife and one of the first things he does is to reclaim a set of spea...

In unison, director Óliver Laxe & composer Kandang Ray have created one of the most intense and heart racing cinematic experiences in recent years with their Cannes award winning film Sirāt (winning the Jury Prize). Playing out like a modern version of Wages of Fear with a missing daughter and a rave in the desert supplanting that films explosive cargo, Sirāt is as intense as experience as any...

Giles Chan's Jellyfish was one of the cinematic revelations that I experienced during 2025. It's a film about a man, Henry, played with grounded depression by Aidan Rynne, who earns money by being a human punching bag. His body is riddled with bruises, most inflicted by others, some inflicted by himself. He's a jellyfish of a person, consuming enough to survive, but otherwise floating through Pert...

Even though we're only five days into the new year, one of the standout shows for 2026 is the ABC adaptation of Shaun Tan's Tales from Outer Suburbia . This glorious animation carries a stop motion vibe as it invites us into a version of suburbia, one where deep sea divers roam the streets and single mums try to keep their family together. We follow Klara and Pim and their mum Lucy, voiced with be...

Gabriel Mascaro's filmography embraces narrative perspectives that we rarely see on screen. His 2019 film Divine Love is a neon soaked dance experience that amplifies love and unity against a backdrop of bureaucracy, while his 2015 film Neon Bull invites us into a world of rodeos, horse dancing, and flights of fantasy, and in the process, Gabriel invites us to consider the world anew. That approac...

If there's one filmmaker who has left a mark more than any other on my life, it's been Kelly Reichardt. Through her work, I've gleaned an understanding of what American life through the ages is like. From the pioneer days captured with a desolate despair in Meek's Cutoff , to the heart shattering singularity of Wendy and Lucy , to the manner that taste and fortune appear in opportunistic ways in F...

Emmanuel Courcol's heartwarming and heartbreaking film My Brother's Band , aka En Fanfare or The Marching Band , is a film about Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe), a conductor who discovers he has leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. After discovering that his sister is not his blood related sibling and the he was adopted as a child, Thibaut goes down a path of discovery to find his birth mother...

Shaun Tan is many things. He's an Academy Award winning animator, he's an artist who has taken the fantastical to suburbia and made both feel real and otherworldly, and he's someone who has poured years into shaping personal stories into profound imagery.  To me, he's more than just those things. He's someone who has translated what it means to live in Perth, what it means to grow up in...

In its current form, Old Habits is part of the ABC Compass series, but as you'll hear in this interview with Alfie Faber, he's working on expanding the short into a feature length documentary. And gosh, what a film it will be if he gets it to a feature length. Old Habits is a delight, utilising the charm and vibrancy of the Sisters to expand upon a hidden part of Australian queer history. Watching...

Andrew interviews filmmaker Kitale Wilson about his short film A Silent Rebellion. Visit thecurb.com.au/subscribe to support this podcast. Sign up for the latest interviews, reviews, and more via https://www.thecurb.com.au/subscribe/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Andrew interviews Lynette Wallworth about her collaborative documentary Edge of Life. This interview was recorded during the national release of Edge of Life , currently in a limited run in Australian cinemas. Check out your local cinema guide for details, or visit Kismet Movies for additional information on where and how to view the film. the Curb is a reader and listener support...

A brilliant circus family’s hidden legacy unfolds as descendants reunite across continents, revealing their Australian Aboriginal ancestry, global stardom, and the extraordinary secrets they kept in order to survive. The greatest entertainment on earth in the 1900s was the circus and its performers were the global superstars. The big top transported children and adults alike into a world where any...