Crested Butte Film Fest: The New Boy

The metaphor here is a wet blanket thrown over magic and light.

A nine-year-old Aboriginal boy is captured and taken to a remote monastery to learn the White man’s ways. It’s run by a renegade nun (Cate Blanchett) who struggles with Church doctrines in her own secret way. As the “new boy” becomes intrigued by the religious imagery around him, a clash of cultures ensues between the natural, mystical elements of traditional culture and the strict doctrines of Catholicism, personified by the arrival of a statue of a crucified Christ. Starring Cate Blanchett and Aswan Reid. Music by Nick Cave.

Warwick Thornton is an Australian film director, screenwriter and cinematographer. His debut feature film Samson and Delilah won the Caméra d’Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and the award for Best Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, along with many other awards around the world. He also won the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Film in 2017 for Sweet Country, along with the Special Jury Prize at Venice Film Festival and the Platform Prize at Toronto International Film Festival the same year. This will be his third feature film. In recent years, Warwick has made the documentary We Don’t Need a Map, which opened Sydney Film Festival, the slow-TV series The Beach for NITV/SBS that sold to A24 in the US and Firebite, an AMC TV series he co-created that recently premiered.