by Nadine Whitney
Imagine being compared to Benson and Moorhead? For director Matt Vesely that comparison has not only been made, but his feature debut has been picked up by the same festival and North American sales company XYZ that helped put the directors on the map.
Australian sci-fi thriller Monolith showcases rising star Lily Sullivan (I Met a Girl, upcoming Evil Dead Rise) will have its international premiere at SXSW 2023 and has locked ANZ distribution and international sales. Monolith will have its international premiere as part of SXSW’s Midnighters section. Bonsai Films will be handling Australian distribution, with UK based Blue Finch Films covering other territories.
In this taut, contained mystery, we follow a disgraced journalist (Sullivan) as she tries to salvage her career by turning to investigative podcasting. Whilst trying to get to the bottom of a strange artefact that may be linked to an alien conspiracy, she begins to uncover the lies at the heart of her own story.
Monolith was developed and produced through the FilmLab: New Voices program, an initiative run by the South Australian Film Corporation and the Adelaide Film Festival, financed with the assistance of Screen Australia. Monolith is from a script by Lucy Campbell and produced by Bettina Hamilton and was filmed across a three-week period in one location in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills.
Todd Brown of XYZ Films said: “XYZ is thrilled to be a part of bringing Monolith to audiences in North America. Smart, cerebral science fiction has been core to the XYZ brand since our inception and we believe very strongly that Matt Vesely is a huge talent in that space. We haven’t been more excited about a filmmaker since we first came across Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson with their debut feature Resolution.”
Matt Vesely said: “When we started developing Monolith, we quite literally said to ourselves in one of our very first meetings – wouldn’t it be great to take an indie sci-fi to SXSW? This is a dream come true for this project, our team, and especially for me – I’ve been wanting to go to this festival since I was fifteen. We can’t wait to show the film to a US audience and for people the world over to realise what a star Lily Sullivan is.”
Other Australian films selected for SXSW 2023 include the Cairnes Brothers’ Late Night with the Devil and the Philippou Brothers’ Talk to Me.
