Warwick Thornton is a multi award winning writer, director, cinematographer and documentary filmmaker. His debut feature, SAMSON AND DELILAH, made with non-actors with hardly a word of dialogue, was awarded the coveted Camera d’Or in competition at Cannes. His second feature, SWEET COUNTRY, took out the Special Jury Prize at Venice (where it received a standing ovation) and the Platform prize at TIFF. The acclaim is hardly surprising: Warwick Thornton’s films are heartbreaking, unsentimental, distinctive and strikingly beautiful.
In this session Briar Grace-Smith talks to Warwick about how he achieves his own very distinct version of cinema. Using both SAMSON AND DELILAH and SWEET COUNTRY, the conversation explores his approach to cinematography, use of metaphor and subtext, eliciting performances from non-actors, working with his own scripts versus other writers’ material, and the intention that sits underneath the work.
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