the Curb

Lorcan Finnegan's wild and weird trip-fest flick The Surfer is one that's had local audiences salivating at the prospect of its arrival. That anticipation went into hyperdrive when Oscar winning actor and walking cult-factory Nicolas Cage was announced as the leading man, a bloke returning home to the South West to buy his family home, reconnect with family, and surf a little. His idea of a Christ...

Jacob Richardson's feature film debut The Aegean sees the Queensland based writer-director embrace the Grecian story of a widower, Hector (Costas Mandylor), who finds himself in the orbit of Khristos (Light), a refugee who finds himself in the waters of the Aegean Sea. As Khristos finds himself becoming embedded in Hector's life, he discovers an unexpected bond that will give him a sense of place...

With her essential website Infinite-Women.com , Allison Tyra has built a deep database that contains more than 6000 biographies from around the world and throughout history, documenting the biographies of women who have made a mark in history. Her debut book, Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work , expands on the database within Infinite Women and explores the stories of o...

Kelly Schilling's feature debut film With or Without You is the powerful and impactful story of a mother, Sharon (Marta Dusseldorp) and a daughter, Chloe (Melina Vidler), who are forced to navigate the complicated reality of alcohol addiction, an affliction that Sharon uses to manage her anxiety alongside Valium and men. For Chloe, the man in her life, an ex-boyfriend, turns violent and aggressive...

One of the more exciting news points in recent weeks has been the announcement of the new First Nations initiative Damulgurra Stories. Founded by Larrakia man Cian Mungatj McCue, of Moogie Down Productions, and award-winning casting director and producer Sarah Price of Castaway NT, Damulgurra Stories aims to transform the way productions work with First Nations cast, crew and creati...

Lars and the Real Girl is Craig Gillespie's 2007 indie comedy-drama about a man who has an unconventional relationship with a sex doll. That man is a young Ryan Gosling, who is supported by Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Patricia Clarkson, and Bianca the Doll. Umbrella Entertainment have released an impressive collectors edition of the film which features custom artwork, a poster, artcards, essay...

Before commencing her career as a filmmaker, Jane Larkin was an Australian representative sprinter, pushing her body to the limits on the track. In the moments of preparation, cooldowns, and every minute in between, Jane was building friendships, learning from fellow athletes, and seeing a world of sports that we rarely get to see in cinema. After shifting over to acting in 2018, Jane embraced rol...

Andres Veiel's latest documentary, Riefenstahl , delves into the dark and deep archive of the private estate of Leni Riefenstahl, exposing the deep ties the filmmaker had with the Nazi regime. Andres uses footage and correspondence from Riefenstahl's own personal records, including hidden interviews and documents that present a different side of a director who has been both acclaimed and criticise...

Saskia Archer is an actor on the rise. From the streets of Sydney, to the turf of Tasmania where she embarked on a path to become a paramedic, to a shift to WA where she built her acting skills at the WA Academy of Performing Arts, and now, to the bustling city of New York, Saskia is seeing the world and forging a path in acting doing so. Genre-fans might know Saskia from the 2022 flick The Reef:...

Eli Craig smashed onto the slasher scene with his genre-defying comedy event Tucker & Dale VS Evil , and he's back with another slasher that upends expectations: Clown in a Cornfield . Clown in a Cornfield is based on the first entry in Adam Cesare's Frendo series which chucks a group of teens into the mayhem of a Midwestern American town where they find themselves picked off by a growing grou...

Every so often, you sit down to watch a film, and find that it unexpectedly fills a hole you didn't know you had in your life. You might not know you needed a charming, dose of positivity in that moment, but as the seconds tick over, you find yourself being swept along in a wave of joy that your day shifts and things that would usually bother you suddenly bounce off you, even if it's just for a da...

And we're back with another review discussion with myself, Andrew, and my colleague Nadine Whitney. In this episode, we discuss the work that we both did on the Umbrella releases of Eyes Without a Face and Hounds of Love , while also discussing the importance of the supplementary materials that come with physical media releases, alongside the work that goes into writing or creating essays for phys...

ion to our humanity. At twelve years of age, Darwin won the award for Best Film by a Child Producer, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing at the KidzFlicks awards for his short film Red Panda Man . He had previously made a claymation short film called My Eco Friendly House . Darwin then also was a Tropfest Jr finalist for his short Milk . Again, he was only twelve years old at the time. https://w...

In December 2013, Australian journalist Peter Greste, alongside fellow Al Jazeera colleagues Mohamed Fadel Fahmy and Baher Mohamed, were arrested in Cairo, Egypt under charges of holding illegal meetings with the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation declared as a terrorist group by the Egyptian Interior Ministry.  Kriv Stenders is a prolific Australian filmmaker, with his work spanning feature...

Aussie band Kingswood are rock royalty, having played shows with AC/DC and The Hives, tearing down the rooves of Aussie venues in equal measure with their unique brand of raucous rock. In 2024, the band undertook a record-setting road trip across Australia with the Hometowns Tour, the longest ever music tour, encompassing 112 shows over six months, with everywhere from the outer regions of Western...

In 2024, director Natalie Bailey and writer Lou Sanz unleashed Audrey onto audiences in Australia and America. Here's a film that I called a caustic comedy that rains like refreshing acid rain. Here's the story of a mum, Ronnie (played by Jackie van Beek), who opts to literally take over the life of her daughter Audrey (Josephine Blazier) when she ends up in a coma after an accident. This immacula...

At just twenty years old, transgender wunderkind Alice Maio Mackay has crafted a filmography that would make most seasoned professionals envious. Alice's filmography is built within a defiantly independent space that centres queer stories on screen. From 2021's short film The Serpent's Nest , to the run of genre defying horror and sci-fi feature films that includes 2021's So Vam , 2022's Bad Girl...

For decades, David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz were Australian film reviewing royalty, having built up a loyal following with their weekly show on SBS,  The Movie Show . The 90s and early 00s was the peak of David & Margaret’s influence over Australian audiences. What they recommended, people would head out and go and see. Both David and Margaret are staunch supporters of cinema, becom...

This podcast is also recorded in Naarm, Victoria, with fellow critic Nadine Whitney reviewing two of the films screening at the 2025 Alliance Française French Film Festival. In the following reviews, Nadine discusses Anne Fontaine's Bolero and Éric Besnard's Miss Violet . For all the festival details and to purchase tickets, visit AFFrenchFilmFestival.org . If you want to find out more about the w...

Carmen & Bolude marks something of a first for Australian films. Here is a comedy about two close friends, Carmen (Michela Carattini) and Bolude (Bolude Watson), who both call Australia home. Carmen proudly embraces her Latin heritage, while Bolude navigates the line between Western values and her Nigerian roots. Together, they take on the world and the rampant Americanised identity politics t...

My Melbourne is a powerful and uplifting new collaborative feature made with an array of established Indian directors and emerging Australian filmmakers, alongside a diverse group of writers behind the scenes, who each bring one of four stories of Naarm-Melbourne to life on screen. My Melbourne opens with the narrative called Nadini, it's directed by Onir with co-direction from William Duan. This...

Matt Mirams is a indie creative who has over two decades of experience as a musician, actor, director, theatresports enthusiast, and independent filmmaker. His latest film, Residence , is a bloody zombie comedy that sees Australia inflicted by a brain eating parasite that turns its hosts into mindless zombies that wander the countryside looking for their next victim. It's also a biting satire abou...

With her debut feature documentary film Queens of Concrete , Eliza Cox takes audiences on a seven year journey with three skateboarders: Ava Godfrey, Charlotte Heath, and Hayley Wilson. They each embrace a different style of skateboarding, with street and park being the two styles that are featured at the Tokyo and Paris Olympics. It's that 2020 Olympics that the girls have their sights set on, wi...

Jesse Vogelaar is a writer and director whose works spans across Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, flitting between the stage where he masters the art of improvisation, to advertisements, where he transforms the products of Samsung or Specsavers into savvy slices of commercial entertainment, to his growing body of short films, which includes You Lose , a short that Junkee called Australia’s Grea...

Listeners should note that the following interview contains discussions about trauma as it relates to #MeToo. The work of director Ruth Caudeli regularly appears at the Queer Screen Mardi Gras Film Festival , with her previous films Eva and Candela and Leading Ladies both screening at the festival. Her latest film, Same, Again , makes its world premiere at the festival on 25 February 2025. This im...