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Australian director Warwick Thornton likes films that make an audience work.
"I don't like films that just let you dribble and you know who's going to win and what's going to happen" he says.
It's no wonder then that his latest film is, at times, hard to watch.
Released nationally on the eve of Australia Day, Sweet Country is a historical epic that riffs on the western genre, set against the stark and sublime landscape that surrounds Alice Springs.
The story, about an Aboriginal stockman who kills a white landowner in self-defence, unfolds in 1929, so the film sits very late in the traditional chronology of the western.
Younger viewers might find it difficult to believe that all those tattered period costumes and horse-drawn buggies where commonplace less than century ago.
But what's more unsettling is that the film's plot, so full of brutality, is based on true events.
Confronting and very real
Sweet Country was developed from a script written by Thornton's long-time collaborator, sound recordist David Trantor, whose grandfather's life forms the basis of the plot.
"The film could be perceived as a classic western, and it was originally written as a classic western," Thornton says.
"There was a good guy and there was a bad guy and their moral worlds never collided.
"But I wanted something more than just your classic western."
Although Thornton chose to push the boundaries of the traditional western, his choice of genre still provides the audience with a certain level of distance from the film's difficult subject matter.
"You can go a lot darker in a western. There's the sad fact of a western or a period film in that way is, people today can digest our dark past because it was our past — 'that's not who we are today,'" he says.
"The irony is that it [the film's content] has a lot of connotations today. Racism is still around today, it's just that people are not allowed to openly say what they feel. But they're still racists."
Darkness certainly abounds in the film. One of the more distressing flashbacks features Sam, the film's protagonist, having the living daylights kicked out of him by Archie, another Indigenous stock man, at a white character's behest.
It's a confronting scene.
'1984 is happening to us'
One of Sweet Country's great successes is its contemplation of moral panic in an Australian context.
When asked why it's important to make films that deal with this issue, Thornton doesn't hold back.
"1984, that book, is happening to us. There is a really dark thing happening to Australians at the moment — that fear, the fear of borders, the fear of boats," he says.
"We're spending billions on the idea that the Asian hordes are coming, all the terrorists are coming on boats. What a load of crap."
Thornton sees these narratives as modern recapitulations of the racist aggression that sits at the heart of Sweet Country's tension.
"It's pretty boring Australia. It's like, 'who do we pick on this year?'" he says.
"Who's the next scourge that's ruining our beautiful lives?
"People want to make you very scared so they can control you and that's pretty well what's happening."
Filmmaking is not a right
Thornton considers his role in combatting this fear, as a story-teller, an almost sacred duty.
"If you've got access to radio or to television or to the cinema screen, use it wisely" he says.
"This isn't a right, this is actually something special given to us and we need to use it properly and not abuse it. Use it to empower, not to disempower."
As for the notably controversial release date of Sweet Country, on the eve of Australia Day, Thornton's response is simple and direct.
"It's important for us as a country to learn more about our history so we can make better choices about our future," he says.
"There's no more triple j Hottest 100 [on Australia Day], come and watch this movie. The door is open, Australia's invited, so hopefully they'll come along."
Topics: western-films, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, aboriginal-language, indigenous-culture, alice-springs-0870
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