In Australia, the first laws against domestic abuse were passed in the 1970s. Back in the 1800s, it wasn’t seen as a crime. That’s the era in which Indigenous writer/director/lead actor Leah Purcell’s film The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson takes place. The film is based on Purcell’s award-winning 2016 play, which is a …
Buoyed by a committed and electric performance by lead Lorenza Izzo as 99% good girl 1% bad girl Celina, writer/director Lissette Feliciano’s Women is Losers places this story of feminist pluck and resilience in late 1960s San Francisco (Feliciano’s current stomping grounds). Catholic school girl Celina (Izzo) is limited by her own parents, who are in an …
In documentarian Ursula MacFarlane’s film The Lost Sons, lead subject Paul Fronczak, a man searching for his own identity, walks the line between curiosity and egocentricity in a way that is often off-putting to the viewer. Arguably, for Macfarlane, Fronczak’s personality is part of what is being examined in this convoluted true-crime story about newborn abduction, …
