Based on horrifying crimes discovered in Snowtown, Australia in 1999, The Snowtown Murders is Justin Kurzel’s directorial debut, a stark journey into a brutal subculture of suspicion, addiction and violence. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes’ Critics Week, the film follows Elizabeth Harvey (Louise Harris), a mother raising her three boys in a poor suburb, the atrophied outskirts of Adelaide. After her latest boyfriend displays pedophilic tendencies, she takes up with a new man, hoping for security but instead invites an even more vicious predator into her home. John Bunting (a terrific Daniel Henshall) is the moral compass of a self-appointed neighborhood watch who, fueled by cigarettes and beer, cast judgments on those living around them. The charismatic Bunting enlists his crew to perform acts of sadistic vigilantism on those he considers to be deviants, and in the process takes Elizabeth’s son Jamie (Lucas Pittaway) under his wing. The Snowtown Murders is an uncompromising film focused on the relationship between vulnerable teenager and a father figure who is revealed to be the worst kind of bully. This bizarre saga of Australia’s most infamous serial killer is an unsettling tale of Darwinism gone frightfully wrong.
Directed by Justin Kurzel, 2011, Australia, 119 mins.
SHOWTIMES:
Fri., Mar. 16 at 7 & 9:15 pm
Sat.-Sun., Mar. 17 at 2:30, 4:45, 7 & 9:15 pm
Sun., Mar. 18 at 3, 5:15 & 7:30 pm
Mon.-Thurs., Mar. 19-22 at 7 & 9:15 pm
Tickets: $9.00 general admission; FREE for Facets members
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Charles Coleman, Program Director
773-281-9075 or charles@facets.org
