By Erin Free
THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE (May 4) Since she broke on the world stage in 2002 with the poetic charmer, Whale Rider (which saw young leading lady, Keisha Castle Hughes, nominated for a Best Actress Oscar), New Zealand-born director, Niki Caro, has made a habit of wrong-footing audiences with her choices. She’s delivered a searing drama about sexual abuse and corruption in the mining industry (2005’s North Country); a period film about wine (2009’s The Vintner’s Luck); and a Kevin Costner sports drama (2015’s McFarland USA). Her name has even been in the mix as a possible candidate to direct Marvel Studios’ upcoming Captain Marvel. In 2017, Caro takes another left turn with The Zookeeper’s Wife, which tells the strange true story of Antonina and Jan Zabinski (Jessica Chastain and Johan Heldenbergh) – the keepers of The Warsaw Zoo – who helped to save hundreds of people and animals during the Nazi invasion.
PARIS CAN WAIT (February 9) Eleanor Coppola was an essential ingredient in the crafting of one of the best movie-making-of documentaries of all time with Hearts Of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse – which traced the disastrous shoot of Apocalypse Now, the Vietnam War epic masterpiece directed by her husband, Francis Ford Coppola – and she now turns to feature filmmaking for the first time with the drama, Paris Can Wait. Coppola has cast her hubby’s semi-regular muse, Diane Lane (The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, Jack), in the role of Anne, the long-suffering wife of an inattentive, self-centred Hollywood producer who lets a little light into her life when she takes a drive from Cannes to Paris with one of his business associates. We can also, by the way, thank Eleanor Coppola for her directing daughters, Sofia and Gia.
VICEROY’S HOUSE (May 25) An inexplicably under-celebrated documenter of the Indian experience in England, Gurinder Chadha has brought warmth, honesty, insight, and bundles of good humour to canny charmers like 1993’s Bhaji On The Beach, 2002’s Bend It Like Beckham, 2004’s Bride & Prejudice, and 2010’s It’s A Wonderful Afterlife. Chadha has also proved that she can work outside that brief with 2000’s LA-set What’s Cooking and 2008’s teen flick, Angus, Thongs, And Perfect Snogging. Chadha now delivers her first period drama with Viceroy’s House, which is set in 1947, and follows the trials and tribulations of Lord Mountbatten (Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville), who is charged with handing India back to its people from The British Empire. 
THEIR FINEST (April 13) Boasting a rare ability to dig deep into the interior lives of her characters, Danish director, Lone Scherfig, made her first international splash with 2000’s Italian For Beginners, and has continued to impress ever since, with quirky, daringly unconventional films like 2002’s Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself, 2007’s Just Like Home, 2011’s One Day, 2014’s The Riot Club, and 2009’s widely acclaimed An Education, which received three Oscar nominations. In her latest effort, Lone Scherfig adapts Lissa Evans’ novel, Their Finest, which stars Gemma Arterton (Clash Of The Titans, Quantum Of Solace), Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games), Bill Nighy, Jeremy Irons, Eddie Marsan, Richard E. Grant, and Jack Huston, and follows a British film crew attempting to boost morale during WW2 by making a propaganda film after the horrors of the Blitzkrieg.
THE BEGUILED (June 30) A fascinating treatise on gender politics, Don Sigel’s 1971 Civil War-set Clint Eastwood-starrer is now set for a perfectly timed remake courtesy of Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides, Lost In Translation, The Bling Ring), who will adapt Thomas Cullinan’s source novel herself. The Oscar nominee has also assembled a brilliant, spot-on cast, with Colin Farrell in the Eastwood role of John McBurney, an injured Union soldier who hides out in a girls’ boarding school in The Deep South. Frequent Coppola muse, Kirsten Dunst, also stars as an angelic schoolteacher, with Nicole Kidman as the school’s fearsome headmistress. Young Australian actress, Angourie Rice (The Nice Guys, These Final Hours), and Elle Fanning, meanwhile, will play students at the school.
WONDER WOMAN (June 1) In amongst all the hand-wringing about how effectively or ineffectively Warner and DC are establishing their interconnected cinematic universe, one piece of their big-money jigsaw puzzle has been met with constant praise. From her flashy, highly enjoyable appearance in Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice to the brilliance of the trailer for her stand-alone film, Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman has been, well, wonderful. There’s also something else that’s been a little under-reported about 2017’s Wonder Woman: with a reported budget of $150 million, this will be the first film directed by a woman with a budget north of $100 million. The lady in the driver’s seat is Patty Jenkins (2003’s Monster), who returns to the world of superheroes after coming within a hammer strike of directing 2013’s Thor: The Dark World, which she departed due to creative differences with Marvel.
PROFESSOR MARSTON & THE WONDER WOMEN (2017) In what is the perfect companion piece to Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, Angela Robinson’s Professor Marston & The Wonder Women looks at the truly strange life of Professor William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans), the Harvard psychologist who not only helped invent the modern lie detector test, but also created the character of Wonder Woman in 1941. Not strange enough? Marston was in a polyamorous relationship with his wife, Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall), a psychologist and inventor in her own right, and Olive Byrne (Aussie actress, Bella Heathcote), a former student who became an academic. When Marston died of skin cancer in 1947, Elizabeth and Olive remained a couple and raised their and Marston’s children together. Marston’s unconventional home life has long been viewed as instrumental in Wonder Woman’s creation, so expect Angela Robinson (D.E.B.S, Herbie Fully Loaded, TV’s The L Word and True Blood) to create something truly extraordinary here.
THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN (January 5) While the world of the male adolescent has been thoroughly traversed (in everything from Catcher In The Rye and Porky’s through to the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming), the inner lives of female teens have been depicted with less regularity. Looking to redress the balance slightly is The Edge Of Seventeen, which tracks the topsy-turvy high school life of Nadine (gifted it-girl, Hailee Steinfeld, who just received and Golden Globe nomination for her performance here), whose anxiety gets cranked to head-spinning levels when her best friend, Krista (Haley Lu Richardson), starts dating her older brother (Blake Jenner). Already scoring warmly positive reviews, The Edge Of Seventeen marks the directorial debut of Kelly Fremon Craig, who co-penned the 2008 Demi Moore-directed short, Streak, and Vicky Jenson’s 2009 comedy, Post Grad.
THE REHEARSAL (January 19) With dark, moody films like 1992’s Crush and 1999’s deliriously drug-addled Jesus’ Son, Canadian-born, New Zealand-raised director, Alison Maclean, established herself as a daring and engagingly idiosyncratic filmmaker. But like so many female directors, her career has been one of fits and starts, with Maclean expertly directing episodic TV like Sex & The City, The Tudors, and The L Word instead of moving onward and upward with her own projects. With 2017’s The Rehearsal, however, Alison Maclean is finally back on the big screen with the decidedly more light and upbeat story of first-year acting student, Stanley (James Rolleston), who mines his girlfriend’s family scandal as material for the end-of-year show at drama school, resulting in a moral minefield.
JASPER JONES (March 2) One of the most highly anticipated Aussie flicks of 2017, Jasper Jones is also the latest effort from director, Rachel Perkins, who has impressed with a wide variety of films, including 1998’s Radiance, 2001’s One Night The Moon, 2009’s Bran Nue Dae, the 2014 doco, Black Panther Woman, the TV movie, Mabo, and the series, Redfern Now. Jasper Jones is set during a scorching summer in 1969 when a bookish boy (Levi Miller, Pan, Red Dog: True Blue) is woken by the titular mixed race outcast (Aaron L. McGrath), taking them on a journey into a forest and a mystery that will consume the entire community. The cast includes Angourie Rice (The Nice Guys), Dan Wyllie, Toni Collette, Hugo Weaving, and Matt Nable, and boasts a script by Shaun Grant (Snowtown).
ALSO OUT IN 2017: UNTITLED KATHRYN BIGELOW PROJECT, BEFORE I FALL, UNFORGETTABLE, ROCK THAT BODY, EVERYTHING EVERYTHING
