Sweet Country (2018) on Netflix
R20181h 53mCrimeDramaThrillerWestern
Central Australia, 1929. Sam Kelly, an Aboriginal stockman, is sent with his wife and niece to work on Harry March's station. When March forces his way in, Sam shoots him in self-defense.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb6.9/1010,186 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes96%
Trailer
Plot summary
Central Australia, 1929. Sam Kelly, an Aboriginal stockman, works for Fred Smith, a preacher and grazier. Harry March, a veteran of the First World War, farms nearby and needs fencing repaired at his place. Smith sends Sam there with Lizzie, Sam's wife, and Lucy, Sam's niece. While Sam is away rounding up cattle, March rapes Lizzie and threatens to flay her and Sam if she tells anyone.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Sweet Country (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film is based on the true story of Wilaberta Jack, an Aboriginal Australian man who shot an ANZAC veteran, Harry Henty, in 1929. The film's scriptwriter and sound recordist, David Tranter, was a great-nephew of Jack's.
- Scriptwriter David Tranter, who says he was not a writer, first drew the Wilaberta Jack story in a couple of sketchbooks, taking about two weeks, after Murray Lui said on a film shoot in the Tiwi Islands that it would make a great movie.
- After Stephen Cleary helped him type the story up into a treatment, Tranter took it to the Ignite Screenwriting workshop, where they helped him get 128 pages of script written in four days.
- The town scenes were shot in a town built at Ooraminna Station, about 40 km south of Alice Springs, for Leah Purcell's film The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson; the set included a police station and a general store.
