By Travis Johnson

Filmmaker turned novelist Ann Turner’s psychological thriller, The Lost Swimmer, is being ushered to the big screen by The Dressmaker producer, Sue Maslin. Development funding comes from Screen Australia.

Turner began her film career with 1989’s Celia,which she wrote and directed. A disturbing psychological portrait of an alienated young girl (Rebecca Smart) in 1950s Australia. Her most recent film, 1996’s Irresistable, brought together Susan Sarandon, Sam Neill, and Emily Blunt in an interesting riff on the “other woman” thriller subgenre.

Turner will provide the script for The Lost Swimmer, which is described as “…a tense psychological thriller about the secrets in a marriage and the consequences of love and trust. Rebecca Wilding, an archaeology professor, makes sense of the past for a living, but suddenly truth and certainty are turning against her. She fears her
husband Stephen is having an affair, and then she is accused of serious fraud in the workplace. Desperate to find answers, Rebecca leaves with Stephen for Greece, Italy and Paris, where she can uncover the conspiracy against her, and hopefully rekindle her relationship. But on the idyllic Amalfi coast, Stephen goes swimming and doesn’t come back. Rebecca falls under suspicion for his murder. Who is setting her up? Does she know
Stephen as well as she thinks? Rebecca must uncover the truth or she could lose everything
– her family, her career, her freedom.”

“Ann Turner’s debut novel has all the hallmarks for a brilliant suspense thriller,” Maslin observed. ‘
“And we are delighted to be working with her to adapt The Lost Swimmer into a film with international audience appeal. The Dressmaker was also an adaptation (from Rosalie Ham’s novel of the same title) and there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that audiences embrace films based on highly visual and emotionally engaging novels begging to be told on the big screen. The Lost Swimmer is exactly this kind of story”.

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