By Travis Johnson
Having apparently turned down a slew of directing offers from Hollywood, Australian director, Jennifer Kent, will follow up her acclaimed feature debut, The Babadook, with a period piece set in colonial Tasmania.
Produced by Causeway Films, who also produced The Babadook, The Nightingale is the story of a young convict woman seeking revenge for her family, who ventures into Tasmania’s rugged interior with a male Aboriginal outcast as her guide. Her object is the British soldier who wronged her.
Talking to The Guardian, Kent said that she was interested in depicting the reality faced by women in the early 19th century setting. “It was a really crazy time for women. We only hear the sanitised version and I wanted to explore it for real.”
Kent’s film will also look at the genocide of the Indigenous Tasmanian population which occurred at the time. “I couldn’t go down to Tasmania – which was the worst place, the worst attempted annihilation of a culture – and not do this the right way. I feel we’re grown up enough now to look at it and accept it as part of our history.”
Expect The Nightingale in Australian cinemas some time in 2017.