1. Source:

(a) Original Dutch feature:

Unfinished Sky was based on the 1998 Dutch film De Poolse Bruid, English title The Polish Bride. That film had a very skimpy wiki listing here. 

It was also listed at Imdb here, and its writer Kees van der Hulst was listed here, with only two credits, the original and the re-make. 

Apparently there was a controversy surrounding the status of the writer on the original film, with van der Hulst upset by changes made to the screenplay by the director. (See the very bottom of this page).

The screenplay was also adopted into a stage play, by Jibbe Willems, with this a summary of the original plot:

"A Polish woman escapes her Dutch pimps in the Groningen countryside. Wounded, she flees to the farm of a dour farmer. He carries her in, gives her clean clothes and food. Between these two people, islands in themselves who do not speak each other's language, a careful conversation nevertheless ensues in gesture and broken Dutch. They get to know each other better and a bond develops that slowly becomes more intimate. But the outside world cannot be kept at a distance forever and the danger is slowly creeping closer." (here).

(Below: Dutch poster for the original feature).

(b) Peter Duncan:

Writer-director Peter Duncan had a very skimpy wiki listing here. His agent's short bio here, WM here is much more useful:

Peter Duncan is a highly regarded and experienced director and screenwriter. His first feature film, Children of the Revolution, received 9 AFI nominations, winning 3 awards, and 7 Film Critics Circle Award nominations, winning for Best Screenplay. The film also won Best Feature Film at the Canberra International Film Festival, 1996. Peter wrote, directed and co-produced the comedy A Little Bit of Soul, starring Geoffrey Rush and Frances O'Connor, which was nominated for 2 AFI Awards; directed Passion, starring Barbara Hershey and Richard Roxburgh; and wrote and directed Unfinished Sky, which received 10 AFI nominations – winning 5 Awards, and was nominated for 8 IF Awards – winning 3.

Peter was a co-creator, writer, director and producer of Rake (2010 -18) produced by Easy Tiger/Essential Media for the ABC. The series garnered multiple award nominations and wins, including 4 AACTA nominations for Best TV Drama and 4 Logie Award nominations for Most Outstanding Drama Series, Miniseries or Telemovie. Peter himself won a 2011 AWGIE, the 2012 NSW Premier’s Literary Award, a 2014 AWGIE Award, the 2016 AACTA Award for Best Direction, and received a 2012 ADG Award nomination, and a 2015 AACTA Award nomination for Best Screenplay for his work on the show. Peter also wrote the US pilot spin-off of Rake (2014).

In 2020, Peter’s series Operation Buffalo premiered on ABC to strong reviews. Peter was a producer on the show and the sole writer for all six episodes, which received 10 AACTA Nominations including Best Screenplay in Television and Best Telefeature or Miniseries. Operation Buffalo was also the recipient for Best Comedy at the 2020 Berlin Television Festival.

Screen Australia had a podcast (with transcript) with Caris Bizzaca talking to Duncan here, WM here. Unfortunately the film isn't mentioned but it does give an idea of Duncan's approach to scripting.

(c) The film's wiki:

Unlike many other wiki listings for Australian films, at some point an academic, or an equivalent, got hold of the film's wiki, and wrote an exegesis on the film's themes,  including 'fear of others', 'isolation', 'contextual consequences', 'overcoming fears' and 'Australian identity'.

The result is a much longer listing than the usual Australian film wiki and there's a handy set of references to academic papers regarding the film, though many aren't easily accessible online.

This makes the film's wiki much more useful than usual for anyone interested in writing a paper about the film.

The production company's website could be found on Trove here.

2. Cast:

In head credit order:

William McInnes as John Woldring 

Monic Hendrickx as Tahmeena 

David Field as Sergeant Carl Allen 

Bille Brown as Bob Potter 

Roy Billing as Royce 

Christopher Sommers as Mike Potter 

The tail credits are in order of appearance and a couple of other cast also have wikis:

Renai Caruso as Kate 

Mercia Deane-Johns as Barbara 

3. Music:

Antony Partos won awards/was nominated a number of times for his score. However it doesn't seem that the soundtrack was released on disc, and Partos's eponymous website doesn't even list the work. See this site's pdf of music credits for more details on Partos.

4. Urban Cinefile interview:

Urban Cinefile interviewed Peter Duncan and others in the creative team under the header Worth Telling, saved to Trove here:

After a nine year hiatus, Peter Duncan returns to feature directing with Unfinished Sky, a dramatic love story with universal themes and global relevance; the trick was to make the film worth re-telling in Australia, he tells Andrew L. Urban.

Peter Duncan’s intelligent transportation of a critically acclaimed Dutch film, The Polish Bride, from Holland to the Australian outback depended for its success – in his eyes, at last – on finding “a way to make it worth telling in Australia, and worth telling it again, after it had been made into a pretty good film to start with,” he says after the film opened the 2008 Dungog Film Festival (May 29). Standing outside the oldest cinema in Australia, the James Picture Theatre (opened in 1914), Peter talks about Unfinished Sky with quiet confidence and satisfaction.

“The conceit that attracted me is the post 9/11 world – the consequences of that day include a West that has become less trusting, more isolated.” This is what drove Peter to transplant the story of a Polish woman who fled to Holland, was raped and forced into prostitution. In Unfinished Sky, the woman is an illegal migrant looking for her daughter who fled to Australia with another family. But she is held against her will in a country town hotel, until she escapes and ends up on the remote farm of reclusive widower, John Woldring (William McInnes).

“John is an Aussie farmer in self imposed isolation,” says Peter, “who is forced to confront this strange foreigner and he has a choice to either embrace or reject her. Embracing her makes his life richer.” The role of the woman in both films, named Tahmeena in Unfinished Sky and Anna in The Polish Bride, is played by the same actress: Monic Hendrickx. In the Dutch film she had to speak some lines in Polish; in the Australian film she learnt some lines in Dari (Persian). Peter admits he agreed to meet with her when casting the film “to be polite to the producers,” but was quickly convinced Monic was ideal for the role.

"an engaging and intriguing drama"

Anchored by its two outstanding central performances, Unfinished Sky is an engaging and intriguing drama. It is engaging for its characters and intriguing for its unpredictable story.

The film is the first production by New Holland Pictures, a company established by Australian producers Cathy and Mark Overett and Dutch producers Anton Smit and San Fu Maltha, specifically to make English language feature films.

Previously Cathy and Mark had established a highly successful international television business, which included a relationship with IdtV Film in Holland, run by Anton Smit.

“We were very keen to get into the feature film business and they were very keen to start to expand into English language films, so we sat down at a round table and discussed a number of projects which were possible, and this one rose to the surface,” Cathy explains.

“It is a remake a Dutch film called De Poolse Bruid (The Polish Bride) and it is very much one which has universal themes. It is four years since we started to make this and it is interesting that the themes even then were quite resounding, but now even more so. It is quite pertinent to today’s times both in Australia and internationally.”

Anton Smit has been visiting Australia for 30 years and was looking for the right opportunity to work here: “I’ve always been very frustrated when a beautiful Dutch movie doesn’t cross over internationally because of its language and so I’ve been toying with the idea of finding a Dutch movie and trying to translate it to make it into an English language movie.

"a real Australian film"

“With this film, I had from the beginning the idea of making it into a real Australian film, a beautiful love story which would also be a political statement. In Holland, the film was about how, when the Iron Curtain went down, a mass of women from behind the Iron Curtain came to the West. Some of them were forced into prostitution. In our film the woman is from Afghanistan and she falls in love with a Queensland farmer.”

Anton and Cathy talked to several writers about adapting the script of The Polish Bride to an Australian setting. They chose Peter Duncan initially as the writer but then it quickly became apparent that Peter was also the right person to direct the film.

“We only had five weeks to shoot it,” says Peter, “but what you lose in exuberance over the years you make up in experience.”   Published June 19, 2008

5. Urban Cinefile - William McKinnes interview:

This Urban Cinefile interview with lead William McKinnes could be found at Trove, here:

Taking his acting cue from the dog on the set of his latest film, Unfinished Sky, William McInnes likes the minimalist approach, he tells Andrew L. Urban.

Milo the dog, who plays Elvis the dog in Unfinished Sky, set the style of acting emulated and admired by William McInnes. “Watching rushes, he was inspirational,” say William. “He was the star. He was just being the dog. Actors like to act, you know, strain a facial muscle or stand like Paul Newman in Hud … whatever. But all you have to do is just BE. Milo gave me that,” he says only half joking.

"I’m a bit of a plank of a man"

William had just finished reading the biography of the late British actor Alec Guinness, who could convey a lot with just his eyes. “I’m a bit of a plank of a man, but it’s important to try and have something going on behind the eyes. I’m not suggesting that I’m in that class at all,” he says, “but if anything, that’s what I get the most pleasure from as an actor, those subtle things, things that often go straight through to the keeper….”

But people do notice, as critical and popular reaction to William’s work proves, for roles ranging from TV dramas like Sea Change to films like Look Both Ways. In Unfinished Sky, he plays John Woldring (William McInnes), who finds a distraught, bruised & bloodied woman scrambling on his outback Queensland property. He has no option but to tend for her – even though he doesn’t understand a word she says. She seems terrified of some locals. Within the next few days he learns her name is Tahmeena (Monic Hendrickx) and on a map, she indicates she’s from Afghanistan. In town, John gets suspicious of the publican (Bille Brown), who is asking about one of their ‘cleaners’ having made a run for it. John keeps Tahmeena hidden at his house, teaching her English and soon learns she fled Afghanistan in search of her daughter, who had replaced a dead girl in a refugee family. When he offers her clothes from a cupboard, Tahmeena discovers secrets from John’s past. But the publican comes looking for her and local cop Carl (David Field) also catches up with her.

“The bloke I play is a farmer, a man who in a sense is the end of a line,” explains William. “He comes from a family that’s worked the land and worked in a manner which has created a great deal of wealth, but the glory days are behind them. He’s a very detached man, he doesn’t really engage in life and he functions well enough to keep the farm ticking over, but you have to look at how he keeps this marvellous home he had – it is not so much a home now, it is almost a mausoleum of past glories and of his own emotional life, a life he’s put on hold; and it is what happens in the film which reawakens his acceptance of life and so it’s a story of redemption.”

His is a real grief, says William, “and it is a detached, nihilistic view of the world, which is very interesting to play…because if you act that you can look like Bela Lugosi who needs coffee, it’s a really bad thing to actively try and play, so you’ve really got to sit on it a lot and invite the audience in; you can’t comment on what you’re doing, you just have to ‘be’…”

"a self effacing manner"

He has a self effacing manner and jokes about how actors are just a small cog in the filmmaking wheel. He recalls that when his wife the filmmaker Sarah Watt was editing Look Both Ways, he’d hear screams and swearing from the edit room; “I figured they were swearing at the actors so I’d just leave the cut lunch outside the door.”

William’s approach to acting is not complicated. “I dunno, I just have a crack at it … Well, I do prepare of course, but you also have to be able to throw it away, otherwise you burn yourself up.”

As for his co-star, Dutch actress Monic Hendrickx, he knew about Monic “and her reputation as a really terrific actor, and she is – she’s the hamburger with the lot – she’s fantastic. She’s a really lovely person and she can really burn up the camera, so that’s great. And shooting something in Queensland which is where I grew up, it’s terrific that the script of this quality can be shot here in Queensland. I think it is important to share the production of Australian films around the country so that was a big plus.”

Asked about working with director Peter Duncan, William says, “he wears silly hats and is very polite. He’s a very gentle man. He casts the actors and largely leaves you to get on with it. But he knows what he wants.

"approach to acting is not complicated"

Appropriately enough, Unfinished Sky opened the 2008 Dungog Film Festival two weeks prior to its Australian commercial release on June 19; appropriately because as a joke, William used to include in his CV several fake credits for fun – like the film he starred in called The Man From Dungog.  Published June 19, 2008

6. If Magazine:

If Magazine chose the film's release as a chance to coat hang a survey of director Peter Ducan's career up to that point. The profile was a cover story and ran in issue #110, June 2008 - click on to enlarge:

7. Media Culture/Michael Dalton interview:

This interview by Michael Dalton, posted by Tim Milfull on M/C on Saturday, 21st June 2008, was saved to Trove here:

Peter Duncan speaks to m/c:

Shortly after I attended the screening, I was lucky enough to interview the director himself. He’d just arrived fresh from the Dungog Film Festival where his film opened the festival.

Michael Dalton: So was Unfinished Sky well received?

Peter Duncan: Yeah we opened the festival and it got a beautiful reception. It was all Australian films, non-competitive, a fantastic few days.

MD: It’s an impressive film, beautifully constructed. It’s a remake of a very successful Dutch film.

PD: Yes - The Polish Bride - but it’s not so much a remake as an adaptation. I wanted the premise to remain the same.

MD: Was Bill McInnes your first choice?

PD: Absolutely. In terms of physical look, he fit the bill perfectly; but he’s also someone who’s underrated in cinema features because he spends so much time in television. He inhabits the role brilliantly and he loves playing Aussie characters. While he can be hilariously cynical, he’s a smart guy and I think he found something in the character he really admires, even the lost aspects of it. He makes extraordinary choices in his performance.

MD: He’s very pure in the role. He doesn’t relent easily.

PD: Yes, that was one of the things in the development. With each draft, the script got better the later he got kind. In the first draft, he turned kind somewhere around page 8 but the later I allowed John to relent, the stronger he got and it had a much greater impact on the film.

MD: There’s an extraordinary turning point in the film that recalls an infamous Hitchcock scene where John makes Taheema up to look like…

PD: Oh yes, absolutely. We referred to that as the Vertigo scene throughout the development. There was a much longer version of that scene that unfortunately chafed with the rest of the film.

MD: Critics considered that scene with James Stewart to be perverse at the time. Was it what you were aiming for here?

PD: Not exactly. The function of that scene was simply to put another layer on top of their developing relationship.

MD: What I admired most about the film was how isolated it felt.

PD: Definitely. One of the strengths of the piece is the isolation isn’t just physical, it’s emotional as well. This is a guy who doesn’t want to deal with the rest of the world, he receives an unwelcome guest who represents nothing but a threat to his existence and that’s what attracted me to the material. After 9/11, the world became a much more fearful place, so much more mistrusting of anything foreign and I thought if this trend continues, culturally and emotionally, we’re going to deprive ourselves of so much that’s rich about the world. If we all we want is this homogeneous, vanilla society where we only associate with people who look and sound the same, we’re going to miss all the richness of life…and that’s the central question for the character of John. You know, here’s an unwelcome influence in his life and he can either do something positive with it or reject it. It’s his choice and fortunately for him, by embracing her, albeit reluctantly, his life gets better. He gets over his isolation.

MD: If you were to name a genre Unfinished Sky would fit into…

PD: I think the description that would be most apt would be suspense romance. You know there’s a political edge to it but I certainly didn’t want to go in swinging the hammer; I find that dull because Australian audiences already know that story. For me, the genre my films belong in is up to the audience.

8. Mark Poole transcript of Peter Duncan AWG session:

The AWG's Mark Poole made notes of a session organised by the AWG featuring a number of directors, including Duncan. The session in full was saved to Trove here. 

Poole described the session:

This 2008 session, hosted by the Australian Directors Guild and the AFI with the support of AFTRS, the AWG and Screen Australia saw Elissa Down, Peter Duncan, Dee McLachlan and Nash Edgerton talking about making their films The Black Balloon, Unfinished Sky, The Jammed and The Square at ACMI.

The session ran for two hours so some highlights in relation to Unfinished Sky:

...Peter Duncan explained that his films tend to be pretty much shot as scripted, and added that Monic’s character’s speech had to be translated into Dari so there wasn’t room for improing her dialogue – she had to memorise the translations.

Peter explained that he had been approached by the Dutch production company who had made the Dutch version of the film, called Polish Bride. They wanted to do an English version because they found they were making great films that failed to travel due to the language they were in.

“They came to me in late 2002 and the world was reeling after 911 and I thought there’s an interesting conceit here, as the film is about whether the farmer chooses to engage with the woman or not, and if it does, the world gets better. You saw after 911 people pulling back from things, and if people do that life gets duller.”

He added that the new production company that was set up was called New Holland Productions which Duncan thought was a cute name.

Peter described how William McInnes really inhabited the character, which was enhanced by the fact that he hails from rural Queensland. “He was concerned that the scene where he punts a football over the house would be cut from the film, and kept calling me to ask if the punt was still in.”

In Polish Bride the farmer is a sweet guy throughout the film, but with Unfinished Sky Duncan was attracted to the thriller possibilities of the story. “We wanted to create a feeling of menace in the farmer, so that the audience might feel that Monic might have gone out of the frying pan into the fire, and McInnes reveled in that, in the sense that he might be evil,” said Duncan.

Peter recounted how they only had two days for rehearsals, and the day before something major had gone wrong with William McInnes’ computer, so he was in a foul frame of mind. Monic had arrived after a long flight and she didn’t get McInnes at all. His first words to her were “So are you going to be starkers?”

“She didn’t understand him at all, she didn’t get him.”

Peter explained that in the film McInnes has two modes, one with stubble and one without. “We had to shoot the stubble mode first and this was when she didn’t get him, but when we shot the post stubble McInnes she started to get him, and suddenly she was laughing with him on the set, so they really did parallel the journey of the characters.”

Peter explained that his other films have been pretty wordy and one of the challenges with this one was how to cut the dialogue as he found the film got better the fewer words were in it. “I tried to get them to find ways of doing things without words.”

9. Brian McFarlane interview:

Brian McFarlane did a lengthy interview with director Peter Duncan for Metro magazine 157, available here in pdf form - click on to enlarge:

10. AWG Storyline 23:

Andrew Seccombe wrote about the film for a feature in the AWG's Storyline, issue 23, winter 2008 - click on to enlarge:

11. The Age story:

This story, headed Stranger insights, ran in The Age 20th June 2008, to coincide with the film's domestic release, here:

The Australian film Unfinished Sky has a simple premise. John, a solitary man living in isolation on a Queensland rural property that has seen better days, comes across a stranger, a woman who stumbles onto his land, distressed, bruised, exhausted.

He takes her into the house, helps her recover, and chooses to keep her presence a secret. There are unexplained reasons behind her arrival and his decision to conceal it. And the situation is complicated by their inability to communicate: the woman, Tahmeena, speaks barely a word of English.

Unfinished Sky, says William McInnes, who plays John, is "a film with a brain". It wasn't hard, he says, to take the role. It is also, as it happens, a film with a previous life: it is based on a Dutch movie called The Polish Bride, released in 1998, which made a star of its female lead, Dutch actress Monic Hendrickx.

There are many differences between the two films, in tone and narrative: Unfinished Sky's director, Peter Duncan (Children of the Revolution, Passion) who adapted the script, prefers not to describe it as a remake. But Hendrickx once again takes the lead role. In the Dutch film, she played a Polish woman; in Unfinished Sky, she is an Afghan refugee.

The idea of casting the same actress sounds, at first, like an awkward, even prescriptive link. It wasn't part of the package to begin with, but Duncan says "once the story had been settled" it was suggested by the Dutch and Australian producers that he might like to meet Hendrickx, a well-known actress in Europe. It might help with funding.

"No pressure," he was told, but he went to the meeting in what calls an "appropriately cynical" frame of mind, only to be immediately impressed by her presence — "this dark, Amazonian figure" who walked into the restaurant — but also by the insights that she brought to the notion of a new film. His cynicism evaporated. And, he adds, Hendrickx had just as many doubts: her initial response had been to ask why on earth she would take a role that she had already played.

In fact, says McInnes, Hendrickx made it clear to him that she was struck by the contrast rather than the similarity between the two projects. It was, she told him, a different part and a different film.

Duncan was aware that before the shoot members of his Gold Coast-based crew had reservations about the prospect of a Dutch actress playing an Afghan woman in an Australian film. "They can be very jaded," he says, "but on the very first day of the shoot, they saw what she brought to the role, and they realised, OK, this is serious, this can be good."

The title of the film is a reference to an object, a giant jigsaw puzzle that John is working on, a photograph of a vast expanse of blue sky with wisps of clouds. And the film itself is a puzzle of fragments: there are mysteries about both characters that the audience figures out gradually. We have fleeting glimpses of Tahmeena's memories and experiences of violence. And, bit by bit, we discover things about John's past, the reasons for his seclusion and his reluctance to engage with the world. These fragments don't tell us the whole story. There are shifts in perspective, small revelations or discoveries that change the direction of the film and our understanding of where it is going.

At the same time, there are things the audience simply doesn't need to know. The political context has been pared away, Duncan says — people don't need to have it spelled out in unnecessary or over-determining dialogue. Early in the film, John gets out a map and asks Tahmeena to show him the country she comes from. When she points to Afghanistan, viewers can already begin to form their own sense of what she has gone through.

And when Tahmeena speaks — Hendrickx learnt to say her lines in the Dari language — there are no subtitles. Audiences should not have too much information, Duncan says: they are in John's position, trying to get to know a character without the assistance of a common language.

McInnes is very positive about the challenges and rewards of "taking a story from overseas and putting it into your own culture". He's also upbeat about one particular aspect of his performance: a scene in which he boots a footy high over the roof of his house. When his mother saw the film in Brisbane last year, she told him, he says, that he might not be a better actor than Geoffrey Rush, but he's definitely a better kick.

Unfinished Sky is screening.

12. Sydney Morning Herald story:

This story by Conrad Walters ran in the SMH on Friday, 20th June 2008 under the header Love Comes Knocking, here, Trove here, WM here:

A farmer offers shelter to a battered woman who turns up on his doorstep in Unfinished Sky, reports Conrad Walters.

Suspicious, gruff, morose. Battered, petrified, lost. They don't sound like ingredients for a love story but for director Peter Duncan, these were the traits he had to work with and he's not complaining.

After all, he created the characters.

Duncan, best known as the director of Children Of The Revolution, has made a subtle return to the screen with a challenging romance titled Unfinished Sky. The fictional story is that of John (William McInnes), a widowed farmer alone on an isolated Queensland property, and Tahmeena (Monic Hendrickx), an illegal refugee isolated by language and culture.

Without explanation, Tahmeena collapses outside John's home one morning, bloodied and hallucinating with images of abuse. John, who would rather wallow in misery, takes care of this uninvited survivor and protects her from forces he trusts even less than himself.

It makes for a story of forgiveness and acceptance, although McInnes conjures such a disagreeable John from the start that it seems the climb towards love may prove an impossible ascent.

The basis for Unfinished Sky is a Dutch film of a decade ago called The Polish Bride but Duncan took that as little more than a starting point to write and direct his own Australian take on redemption.

Asked about the difference between the films, Duncan says the earlier movie was far lighter in tone - the original farmer is instantly likeable - but he wanted his own work to avoid the first film's "periods of unalloyed happiness".

"Audiences only really like happiness for a moment. Then they want more trouble," he says. "I wanted there to be a darkness and some mystery about the character of John, so the audience wonders whether or not [Tahmeena] is in a better place than the place she escaped from."

The earlier film had the same Dutch actress, Hendrickx, as its female lead. She was understandably wary of stepping into the same creative stream, Duncan says.

He recalls her reaction: "Why would I want to do that? I've already done it."

Duncan, too, was doubtful. The suggestion came from Dutch backers who helped produce Unfinished Sky and he admits he was "cynical", though open-minded enough to go along with it.

"But she then read the script and what she said to me was, 'This is a different movie. It's a different character. It's a whole new world.'"

In retrospect, Duncan rejoices in her decision, which let him match the intimidating physical presence of McInnes with the powerful Amazon looks of Hendrickx. "It was one of those rare coincidences of commerce and art," he says.

McInnes apparently agrees. "I knew about Monic and her reputation as a really terrific actor," he says in press material for the film.

"She's the hamburger with the lot."

The two actors had little time beforehand to build the chemistry for a love story but, according to Duncan, this had its benefits, given that the film begins with two people incapable of communication.

In one of their first meetings, where Duncan explained an early scene in which John showers the blood and dirt from 0 (sic), McInnes turned to his co-star and blurted, "So, you're gonna be starkers?"

Hendrickx turned to Duncan, bewildered, but McInnes persisted. "You know, starkers. In the raw. Buff."

Eventually, the director translated.

As filming progressed, Duncan says, the actors built a trust that mirrored that developed by their characters. "She really got him. She really found him extremely funny. By the end of it, they were firm mates."

Rated M. Screening now.

13. The Age story:

Philippa Hawker wrote a story for The Age which ran in the Newcastle Herald on Thursday, August 28, 2008, under the header A Puzzle Of Parallel Lives and was saved to Trove here:

The Australian film Unfinished Sky has a simple premise. John, a solitary man living in isolation on a rural Queensland property that has seen better days, comes across a stranger, a woman who stumbles onto his land, distressed, bruised, exhausted.

He takes her into the house, helps her recover, and chooses to keep her presence a secret. There are unexplained reasons behind her arrival and his decision to conceal it. And the situation is complicated by their inability to communicate: the woman, Tahmeena, speaks barely a word of English.

Unfinished Sky, says William McInnes, who plays John, is "a film with a brain". It wasn't hard, he says, to take the role. It is also, as it happens, a film with a previous life: it is based on a Dutch movie called The Polish Bride, released in 1998, which made a star of its female lead, Dutch actress Monic Hendrickx.

There are many differences between the two films, in tone and narrative: Unfinished Sky's director, Peter Duncan (Children of the Revolution, Passion), who adapted the script, prefers not to describe it as a remake. But Hendrickx once again takes the lead role. In the Dutch film, she played a Polish woman; in Unfinished Sky, she is an Afghan refugee.

The idea of casting the same actress sounds, at first, like an awkward, even prescriptive link. It wasn't part of the package to begin with, but Duncan says "once the story had been settled" it was suggested by the Dutch and Australian producers that he might like to meet Hendrickx, a well-known actress in Europe. It might help with funding.

"No pressure", he was told, but he went to the meeting in what he calls an "appropriately cynical" frame of mind, only to be immediately impressed by her presence "this dark, Amazonian figure" who walked into the restaurant and by the insights that she brought to the notion of a new film. His cynicism evaporated.

And, he adds, Hendrickx had just as many doubts: her initial response had been to ask why on earth she would take a role that she had already played.

In fact, says McInnes, Hendrickx made it clear to him that she was struck by the contrast rather than the similarity between the two projects. It was, she told him, a different part and a different film.

Duncan was aware that before the shoot, members of his Gold Coast-based crew had reservations about the prospect of a Dutch actress playing an Afghan woman in an Australian film.

"They can be very jaded," he says, "but on the very first day of the shoot, they saw what she brought to the role, and they realised, OK, this is serious, this can be good."

The title of the film is a reference to an object, a giant jigsaw puzzle that John is working on, a photograph of a vast expanse of blue sky with wisps of clouds. And the film itself is a puzzle of fragments: there are mysteries about both characters that the audience figures out gradually.

We have fleeting glimpses of Tahmeena's memories and experiences of violence. And, bit by bit, we discover things about John's past, the reasons for his seclusion and his reluctance to engage with the world. These fragments don't tell us the whole story. There are shifts in perspective, small revelations or discoveries that change the direction of the film and our understanding of where it is going.

At the same time, there are things the audience simply doesn't need to know. The political context has been pared away, Duncan says people don't need to have it spelled out in unnecessary or over-determining dialogue. Early in the film, John gets out a map and asks Tahmeena to show him the country she comes from. When she points to Afghanistan, viewers can already begin to form their own sense of what she has gone through.

And when Tahmeena speaks Hendrickx learnt to say her lines in the Dari language there are no subtitles. Audiences should not have too much information, Duncan says: they are in John's position, trying to get to know a character without the assistance of a common language.

McInnes is very positive about the challenges and rewards of "taking a story from overseas and putting it into your own culture".

He's also upbeat about one particular aspect of his performance: a scene in which he boots a footy high over the roof of his house. When his mother saw the film in Brisbane last year, she told him that he might not be a better actor than Geoffrey Rush, but he's definitely a better kick. The Age

Unfinished Sky opens today at Greater Union Newcastle.

14. Courier Mail production story:

Lucy Carne's story Welcome to Boonahwood was published in the Courier Mail on 28th October 2006 and was saved to Trove here, with the lede "Forget the cows and crops, Boonah residents are seeing stars":

For the past five weeks, the sleepy southeast farming shire has felt the Hollywood touch during shooting for the thriller Unfinished Sky.

Scaffolding, cameras and clipboard-wielding crew have settled into the rolling green hills, rustic farmhouses and quiet streets.

"It's certainly been an eye-opener," Boonah shire deputy mayor Robert Smith said.

"The locals have been used as extras and they've been lending the film their farmhouse furniture.

"We've already had the Crocodile Hunter, a Paul Hogan film and some German and Taiwanese crews filming here. Word is clearly starting to spread that this is a very special area for shooting."

Producer Cathy Overett described Unfinished Sky, which features Sea Change's William McInnes and Dutch star Monic Hendrickx, as a "love story with a thriller twist".

It tells the story of a reclusive farmer who falls in love with an Afghani refugee on the run from sex slavery.

Boonah's starring role was sealed by a dilapidated 1920s farmhouse owned by the Queensland Water Board, which has become home to the unfolding drama and 40 film crew.

"We needed to find something within an hour of Brisbane and we wanted a farmhouse with shades of faded grandeur," said Overett, from Queensland production company New Holland Pictures.

"The area is perfect with its beautiful green hills, as I wanted to break that stereotype of Australian farms being flat and sparse."

Hendrickx, who brought five-year-old daughter Javaj for a holiday, is impressed by the region's natural appeal.

"Boonah and Beaudesert are not exactly the places you would visit as a tourist, but it's so relaxed and beautiful."

Unfinished Sky is one of a growing number of productions being shot in Queensland, including nine television shows and two big US productions – Fools Gold starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, and The Starter Wife starring Debra Messing.

Reliable sunshine, a lucrative tax rebate and 12.5 per cent state labour incentive are helping to breathe life back into the industry, which many feared was dying.

An Australian Film Commission report this month revealed Queensland and Victoria have snared 25 feature film contracts to New South Wales' 21. Although New South Wales once boasted of being the site for Star Wars, Superman and Matrix, in the past year the state's share of Australian film production has dropped from 80 per cent to 47 per cent.

Sydney's red tape headaches and exorbitant fees have sent filmmakers packing to Queensland, bringing with them jobs for film crews.

"We wanted Unfinished Sky to be a completely Queensland production, but due to so many productions being shot here there weren't any crew left," Overett said.

"We had to fly crew up from Sydney."

15. Courier Mail story - profile of Mark and Cathy Overett:

Des Partridge wrote a story published in the Courier Mail on 29th September 2006 which profiled the film's producers under the header All about product, saved to Trove here:

Queensland's struggle to establish a permanent film industry has not been helped by a shortage of resident producers.

Now the Queensland husband-and-wife team of Mark and Cathy Overett, who head Brisbane-based company New Holland Pictures, plan to keep production turning over with a series of feature films, documentaries, and television light entertainment programs.

They are already under way. After four years of planning, shooting started this week on the $4.3 million feature production, The Unfinished Sky, being made at Beaudesert and Boonah, south of Brisbane, with their Dutch partners Anton Smit, San Fu Maltha and Holland's IdtV Film.

Starring William McInnes (SeaChange, Look Both Ways) and one of Holland's most popular female actors, Monic Hendrickx, the contemporary romantic drama also featuring David Field, Brisbane actor Bille Brown, and Roy Billings, is being directed by Sydney scriptwriter Peter Duncan (Children of the Revolution).

The film, a reworking of a Dutch film, The Polish Bride, made six years ago, is to be ready to qualify for next year's Cannes Film Festival. It will be released in Australian cinemas next year by Palace Films and internationally by Fortissimo Films.

The Overetts, both Queenslanders, have been married for 22 years, and have two daughters, Madeline, 18, Sophie, 16, and a son, Alexander, 8. At their Cannon Hill offices Mareeba-born Cathy jokes he was the couple's British production.

The business and marriage partners met in Brisbane when Mark was 18, in the first year of university, and Cathy was 16 and finishing her secondary schooling.

Each of them has had success as writers – Cathy won literary awards in north Queensland and Mark had a short story published in Latitudes, a University of Queensland Press collection of new writers.

In the early 1980s, their interest in writing led to them running their own Brisbane advertising company.

But in 1987 the worldwide recession resulted in them losing their home as about a quarter of Brisbane's advertising agencies folded.

"We traded through, but that experience certainly has made us more relaxed about any pressures we've had since," says Cathy, whose CV includes time as press secretary for former federal MP John Moore, and working with the world's oldest natural history film unit run by British-based Royal Society for the Protection of Birds during seven years the couple lived in England until the end of 2001.

In 1993 the Overetts were backed by Film Queensland, before the establishment of the Pacific Film and Television Commission, to canvas support at the Cannes film market for a six-part documentary series called Real Australian Men, which actor Rachel Ward had agreed to host.

Recalls Mark: "Nothing came out of Cannes except one pre-sale to Indonesian television, and I found myself in a bank queue at Cannes, talking to some Englishmen about the cricket. They invited me to have some drinks on a boat that night where I got smashingly drunk. Everyone was telling stories, and someone recounted a story about trying to find their front door during an electricity blackout.

"Someone said that would be a good idea for a TV game show, and I said I knew the right name for it, In The Dark."

That party idea turned into a project for Mark who joined English producers John Gough (another of the party animals) and Roger Allsop to develop new technology allowing cameras to film scenes in the dark more effectively than infra-red and sell the game-show idea around the world.

In The Dark has screened in Britain as a one-off hosted by Julian Clary but the concept has taken off in countries such as Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, Russia, Thailand and Indonesia.

"We're still doing one or two new territories a year," says Mark.

Channel 7 initially expressed interest in the concept, but a change of key management has seen that option languish.

Importantly for New Holland Pictures, the game show was produced in Holland by IdtV, and through connections made there the Overetts were invited to join IdtV and New Zealand's TVNZ in producing a challenge game show, One Hundred Hours, aired on TVNZ2.

Through this project, Mark re-established connections with Dutch producer Anton Smit, who was looking to expand into feature films because of the limited market for Dutch-language films.

"The Dutch industry was a lot like Australia's film industry, in the doldrums, but since Twin Sisters (nominated for the Best Foreign Oscar in 2002) there's been a revival," Mark says.

"We'd been back in Brisbane since the end of 2001, and we set up New Holland Pictures on the premise of doing English-speaking films, mainly as co-productions with Holland," says Mark.

He says IdtV is the second largest production company in Holland, and is owned by the big media corporation, All Three Media, London, which owns 50 per cent of New Zealand's South Pacific Pictures, producers of recent Kiwi hits Whale Rider and Sione's Wedding.

While producing the 20-part New Zealand lifestyle series, Our Place, New Holland Pictures also has been developing two documentaries – close to being confirmed by the ABC – and a portfolio of feature films involving co-productions.

"We're committed to 11 feature films in development, and four of these are almost ready to go," says Cathy, who will be supervising The Unfinished Sky during its five-week filming schedule.

Planned films include an adaptation of Nick Earls's best-seller, Zigzag Street, expected to be made with an Australian leading man and a British leading lady, Strangerland, a drama to feature Anthony LaPaglia, Golden Door, to be directed by Mark Lamprelle, director of My Mother Frank, and Separation City, written by New Zealand writer and cartoonist Tom Scott, writer of Footrot Flats and Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby.

In their quest to see regular production happening in Queensland, the couple have joined forces with the PFTC searching for writers to join an eight-part half-hour TV series, Crosswires, designed to give local writers the experience necessary to move on to bigger projects.

At least four writers will be selected to workshop storylines, characters and scenarios with a script editor to create the book for a series. Then episodes will be allocated to individual writers to draft a shooting script, with the production of the series planned for Brisbane locations early next year.

The search for new writers also has taken the Overetts to a local bar-cafe where Brisbane City Council sponsors a series of monthly script readings, Scripts on Southgate, with professional actors reading scripts submitted by Brisbane writers.

Inquiries about Scripts on Southgate can be made on 3399 2799

16. The Australian profile:

Michael Bodey profiled the film and Peter Duncan in The Australian on 11th June 2008 under the header Return in another direction, WM here, with the lede "The Australian film industry tends to celebrate young writer-directors with too much gusto": 

Our lack of a studio system, where talented individuals create with other talented individuals, means independent artists are given too much leeway. Subsequently, projects and careers can ignite and quickly fizzle.

It appeared that Peter Duncan's career would also be short-lived after the Australian Film, Television and Radio School graduate had an incredibly productive period in the late 1990s. But after three films - the highly praised Children of the Revolution; the panned and over-sold A Little Bit of Soul; and the so-so Passion - he disappeared, apparently in a "writing phase".

"It was a bubble that burst, I guess," Duncan admits, with no hint of ruefulness. "That writing phase lasted longer than I wanted it to. But I did want to take some time to reflect on those very busy five years, those three films, what I'd gleaned from that."

He admits he made an error in banking on one producer's commitment to make more films, but he has no reason for regrets today.

Next week Unfinished Sky, his first feature film since 1999, is released nationally and it suggests a wiser, more accomplished director than the one we've seen only intermittently on television screens. Certainly, this thriller with William McInnes and Monic Hendrickx could do more for his career than any of his previous works.

It showcases Duncan as something more than a director of offbeat comedy-dramas. He has a US agent, he's working with British hit factory Working Title Films (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Ned Kelly) on two more screenplays and another Australian film is likely to go into production later this year.

"It's silly that the business is so ephemeral and it relies so much on the heat of now," he says. "But I'm in a better position to capitalise on the heat now than I was 10 years ago." And it all turns on an unexpected circumstance, a phone call from a Dutch producer asking Duncan if he would try making an English-language version of a Dutch hit film, The Polish Bride. Duncan admits he wondered if he were the right person for the job ("It wasn't my genre").

New Holland Productions was founded with the intention of adapting feature films for different markets. De Poolse bruid was a hit in its homeland and established Hendrickx as a star. New Holland has two more films in development.

The Polish Bride is the tale of an escaped sex slave, taken in by a reclusive farmer in the aftermath of World War II. Essentially a thriller and love story, its political overtones appealed to Duncan.

"But I really wanted to have a different tone - I'm not saying it's better - so that (political resonance) really informed the whole thing," he says of his adaptation of the screenplay.

"One of the many lamentable consequences of 9/11 is that Western society became so mistrusting of anything foreign, particularly people and things Middle Eastern or dark. The danger is in rejecting these foreign influences and what we're missing out on as a consequence of that.

"I thought this could be a really nice metaphor for that. Here's a guy (John, played by McInnes), who's isolated, insecure, not really wanting to know about the outside world, and in comes this foreign influence (Susan, played by Hendrickx) he doesn't want to know about.

"She's mistrustful of him but she has no choice and the essential choice for John is: 'Will I overcome my fear and embrace this foreign influence in my life?"'

Duncan transplanted the story to contemporary Australia, where an Afghan refugee has escaped from a rural brothel. While Susan's back story informs the plot, Duncan says it doesn't dominate it.

"I avoided anything that would be like hitting the audience over the head with a blunt instrument in terms of politics," he says. "I didn't want it to become a diatribe or analysis of mandatory detention, I just wanted it to be there and (point out) that there has to be some really good people behind that (detention centre) wire, just statistically."

Duncan made some shrewd decisions. The beautiful set, outside Beaudesert, Queensland, shows country life near its best, not worst. "We didn't want to go for that 'Oh, this land is cursed' look," he says with a smile. John is not the stereotypical Aussie farmer, struggling to make a living in that harsh land. Duncan's screenplay, adapted from Kees van der Hulst's original, is free of cliche. And McInnes and Hendrickx are two striking, well-cast leads.

McInnes is one of the country's form actors and has abandoned the often insulting moniker of mere "TV actor".

"Absolutely, there was no question in my mind about him," Duncan says. "The TV thing doesn't faze me because people miss opportunities if they listen to that. In terms of this role, William is very self-effacing about his acting and a really proud Australian. He embraces Aussieness. He felt this character in his bones and it comes across on screen."

Hendrickx was another matter. She was suggested to Duncan as a means of raising finance for the film in Europe; the director concedes he was "quite cynical" of such a notion. But he was hooked after meeting the actor for lunch in Amsterdam.

"She walked in and was so beautiful and so dark and such a physical match for William," Duncan says. "The crew obviously felt cynical about it as well, that our Dutch masters had foisted her upon us. But the first day she was on the set, people were knocked out by how she looked and she was so good.

"There's a point in the first few days of filming where the crew lifts if they feel it's worth the effort.

"You could see them rise watching her work, and particularly in Queensland they do a lot of well-paid, shitty work on the Gold Coast, so they can be very jaded."

Unfinished Sky fell into place. It is the 43-year-old's best film since Children of the Revolution, the wild 1996 comedy about Stalin's imagined love child, starring Judy Davis, Sam Neill, Geoffrey Rush and F. Murray Abraham.

Making a thriller as a director for hire may have seemed an unlikely turn in Duncan's career, but "whatever one thinks of the content of Unfinished Sky, I'm very proud of it," Duncan says.

"To me, it shows a learning from what I've done before."

Unfinished Sky opens on June 19.

17. Justinian:

Director Peter Duncan trained as a lawyer, and though he was being grilled by Rachel Francois in 2010 about his TV series Rake, this light-hearted session on the legal eagle couch at Justinian gave some idea of his approach. It ran on Friday, 29th October 2010 and was saved to Trove here: 

The former Allen's man Peter Duncan is the writer, director, co-producer and co-creator of Rake, the new ABC barrister series to launch on ABC TV next Thursday night ... Duncan luxuriates on Justinian's couch

Rake's press kit says that Peter Duncan is "an award winning screenwriter and director".

His first feature film was Children of the Revolution, with Judy Davis, Sam Neill and Geoffrey Rush. It carried off a swag of AFI gongs.

His creative triumphs continued: A Little Bit of Soul, Passion (on the life of Percy Grainger), Romulus My Father (where he script consulted) and Unfinished Sky (six AFI awards and an IF prize for best director).

Duncan was at Sydney Law School in the 1980s, in the golden era when there was no requirement to attend lectures. This enabled him to spend time writing and directing reviews.

He paralegalled at Allen Allen & Hemsley's commercial litigation department for about three years.

Soon he saw where the real money was to be had and headed to the Australian Film Television & Radio School.

Rake is an eight episode series on the life and professional escapades of barrister Cleaver Greene. It starts on November 4 and for the truly fascinated there's a preview on ABC iView on Sunday (October 31) at 8.30 pm.

Justinian had no trouble getting Duncan to explain himself ...

Justinian: Describe yourself in three words.

Peter Duncan: My own problem.

Justinian: What are you currently reading?

PD: "Tony Blair, A Journey."

Justinian: What's your favourite film?

PD: "Manhattan."

Justinian: Who has been the most influential person in your life?

PD: My mother.

Justinian: How and why did you extract yourself from a life in the law?

PD: When I came to the shocking realisation that I had smart, talented friends who genuinely enjoyed reading the Commonwealth Law Reports I knew I had no business being a lawyer. So I applied for film school. Since then it has all been one long series of sexual favours.

Justinian: What is your favourite piece of music?

PD: Satie's Gnossienne No 1.

Justinian: What is your most recognised talent?

PD: My intense personal process with actors - which in the film world means I pay for dinner.

Justinian: What words or phrases do you overuse?

PD: "I want to flip this one." I never use the word "correct". (Please watch episode two of Rake for clarification.)

Justinian: What is your greatest regret?

PD: Every third act I've written.

Justinian: Whom do you envy and why?

PD: Tom Stoppard, because he's been able to forge a fabulous, authentic and idiosyncratic career out of his intellect. Bastard.

Justinian: From where did the inspiration for Cleaver Greene come?

PD: For years Richard Roxburgh and I had been looking for a narrative context about a brilliant but busted man. Then Charlie Waterstreet told us a story and Cleaver, the lawyer, started taking shape.

Justinian: Will Rake inflict lasting damage to the standing of lawyers and the law?

PD: With any luck.

Justinian: What is your most disturbing personal obsession?

PD: That is a matter between me and my internet service provider.

Justinian: What's your most glamorous feature?

PD: Well, my law degree, obviously.

Justinian: If you were a foodstuff, what would you be?

PD: Anything Hugo Weaving has for dinner.

Justinian: What human quality do you most distrust?

PD: Empathy.

Justinian: What would you change about Australia?

PD: Its location.

Justinian: Whom or what do you consider overrated?

PD: Anti-elitism.

Justinian: What would your epitaph say?

PD: "I'm not sure about this line."

Justinian: What comes into your mind when you shut your eyes and think of the word "law"?

PD: A paralegal I once knew.

18. Female - William McKinnes:

A similarly light-hearted interview was done by Female magazine, with lead William McInnes, saved to Trove here.

It began with a promotional Palace press release to set the scene:

Palace Films is proud to announce the release of Unfinished Sky starring William McInnes (Look Both Way, SeaChange) in cinemas nationally from June 19.

Written and directed by Peter Duncan (Children of the Revolution, Hell Has Harbour Views), Unfinished Sky is a superbly layered love story for grown ups set against the rugged and tense beauty of country Australia.

When Tahmeena (Monic Hendrickx) stumbles onto John's (William McInnes) isolated farm, he has no choice but to take her in. She's been badly injured and speaks no English. While John's not inclined to welcome visitors, not since the suspicious death of his wife, he's even less inclined to involve the police. So he goes about his business as he waits for her to heal when he plans to send her on her way.

An initially reluctant voyage of mutual discovery begins as these two strangers gradually learn to communicate and connect.

Tahmeena brings the homestead back to life, reopening John's eyes to the beauty of his land. In return, John does his best to track down the lost daughter she sent ahead before herself fleeing her war-torn homeland.

As the layers of mistrust and hurt are peeled away, a love affair - passionate and poetic - unfolds to reveal the beauty of freedom, hope and choice.

Unfinished Sky explores the nature of loss and the language of love. It's about finding the courage to trust again, the risks we take to protect those close to us and the devastating consequences of small town secrets.

The interview with William McInnes then followed:

Female: Why did this character or movie appeal to you?

William McInnes: It was a chance to shoot up in Queensland where I grew up and I thought thought that might be fun and also a chance to work with Peter Duncan who I have always liked.

Female: What is your next venture?

William McInnes: A book tour for my book That'd Be Right and another movie.

Female: What challenges did you have find while filming?

William McInnes: Not eating too much at lunchtime.

Female: How is Unfinished Sky different to anything you have done before?

William McInnes: Well I suppose it was more atmospheric and an emotional piece. Also a lot of the film uses very little dialogue, so I guess there’s a few differences.

Female: What are you looking forward to most in regards to the release of Unfinished Sky?

William McInnes: Oh I suppose I hope people will go and enjoy an Australian film that entertains with a bit of a brain.

Female: You've gone through a lot to get this far, has it been worth it?

William McInnes: The lunch on a film set is always worth it.

Female: Did you always want to act?

William McInnes: No not really. I think you let yourself be drawn into it. Let yourself fall into it.

Female: How was it working with Peter Duncan?

William McInnes: Very pleasant. He's a very nice fellow.

Female: How was it filming in your home state?

William McInnes: It's always good to go back to Queensland. One of my favorite places.

Female: How can you relate to your character?

William McInnes: I guess we can all relate to somebody who has experienced a loss of some kind, and I think the fear of not dealing well with it is one which would hold some resonance for most people. Also I have always enjoyed kicking footballs over a house.

Female: What's a typical day like for you?

William McInnes: Pretty chaotic.

Female: Tell me a bit about the movie?

William McInnes: Well I think it is solid movie. A story that is beautifully shot, well told and one that never forgets it is supposed to entertain people. The fact that it has a bit of brain to it is a real bonus.

19. Matthew Pejkovic Interviews - Peter Duncan and William McInnes:

(a) Director Peter Duncan:

Matthew Pejkovic did a short interview with director Peter Duncan, here, and it appeared in a slightly different form in MediaSearch, saved to Trove here:

Peter Duncan is the writer/director of new Australian film Unfinished Sky. He spoke to Matthew Pejkovic.

Matthew Pejkovic: Hi Peter. How are you this morning?

Peter Duncan: Fine, thank you.

MP: Unfinished Sky is a re-make of The Polish Bride. Were you familiar with the film prior to being approached to re-make it?

PD: No, I wasn't. The first I heard of it was when I was approached by the producers.

MP: You were originally approached to write the screenplay, but then it was also decided that you would be the best director for the film. What was it about this project that made you made to want direct again after a several year absence from directing?

PD: Well, it wasn't that I had been turned off directing at all. It's just that I had been really focusing on writing for a few years, and once the project was given to me you start to work not only ways of how to approach it in terms of adaptation, but also inherent in that process for me is looking at it in the directorial sense as well. After I thought about the story for a while, and the film as it existed, and how it would be adapted to Australia… because this is was in 2003/2004 I started to think about 9/11 and the impact that had on us. Not just in a practical sense, you know the hideousness of airports. But also just culturally and socially and how people have become more fearful of each other. And I thought making the film about how that sort of fear can be calcifying and can really diminish your life, and I thought it could be a really interesting thing to make from that point of view. A film about overcoming those fears.

MP: The film features a number of underlying political and social themes, namely were immigration and sex trafficking. Was it hard to keep those themes and issues at bay whilst developing a love story?

PD: Well I hope not! It wasn't hard in execution. We didn't want to get into long tracks about specific issues of Australian immigration policy or how the sex trafficking works in Australia. They exist as a couple of threads in what is a much more complicated sort of fabric. And I didn't want to hit audiences over the head with political themes and ideas. So the trick was getting the balance right and making sure the drama was protected at all costs and if you can sneak in some undercurrent of ideas that's a great thing as well.

MP: You have found yourself in a unique position where your lead actress was also the star of the film which you were re-making. How did the casting of Monic Hendrickx come about? Was she on your mind when you were writing the screenplay?

PD: No, she wasn't. As you probably are aware the company that produced Unfinished Sky - New Holland Pictures - was a sort of joint venture between a Dutch company IdtV Film and Australian producers Cathy and Mark Overett. And because there was a fair bit of Dutch investment it was put to me in a polite and gentle way to at least consider Monic, and I was a bit cynical about that. I said of course I would consider her but in the back of mind I was saying this isn't the right thing, until I met her in Amsterdam. She is so strong and so smart and such a lovely person that it was within 90 seconds I thought she is fantastic! And she has got that dark look which was so authentically Afghani. In fact there was a fair bit of cynicism on the crews part too until they actually met her, and then there jaws dropped when the realised…I don't know why they were expecting a blonde person or something. But she really impressed everyone.

MP: During the first few scenes of the movie, dialogue between William McInnes' and Monic's characters was sparse as they try to get over a language barrier. Could you delve into how you guide your actors during those scenes?

PD: Well, it's really about making sure that that everyone (the cast and crew) are aware where they are in the story at any time obviously, because we were not shooting in sequence. The issues really turned out to be issues of trust, because the more they grew to trust each other the more they could communicate, even if it was a non-verbal communication where they sort of work out a language of their own. So it was very much about in that first act keeping a pre-profound level of mistrust between the two, and as a result of that -and as a result obviously that they don't share a common language - there is very little dialogue, and I think that really helps that tension.

MP: During those scenes you decided not to use subtitles when Monic spoke Arabic. Was that so the audience could relate with the confusion of William's character?

PD: Yes, that's right. It's pretty much from his point of view. He is the Australian; she comes to his farm… I think, or I am absolutely sure that it would have really dissipated the tension of the film if the audience understood her back story half and hour before he did. That is part of the mystery. That is part of the fun. (Laughter) When Monic first saw the film she thought there had been some mistake because there had been no subtitles! She had done so much work getting it absolutely right, and I said "Well, were never going to subtitle your dialogue".

MP: There was a real nice, funny moment in the film where Monic sings Heartbreak Hotel to William's character. Was that in the script? Or did it come through rehearsals…

PD: That was something I wrote.

MP: I love the photography in the film. Could you please delve into the approach you and cinematographer (Robert Humphries) had for the film.

PD: Bob and I had a really, really productive and fun creative partnership. We did something together that I had never done before: we sat down for many, many days and shot listed the whole movie. Not that we used the shot list prescriptively, because it was a tough shoot to day in five weeks, and we needed to plan within an inch of our lives. And out of those conversations came a lot of broad and detailed concepts. But what we were really looking for at the start of the move was something that was not… where the colours were crushed a bit, so it was a bit greyer. Shot more hand held - I don't think used the dolly until half way through the movie - so there was a sort of jaded quality about it. There was something abrasive about it. Chasing. And that was something that formed the way Suresh (Ayyar, editor) cut the movie as well. So what happened in the second half, the romance starts to kick in, the camera movements become more fluid and the colours become more saturated and become richer.

MP: The Australian Film Industry is in an interesting place where we are producing some of our best work in years, yet audiences are choosing not to watch local productions. How would you describe the current state of filmmaking in Australia?

PD: (Pause) Look, I think you are right. I think that we are making some of our best work in years last year and I hope this year. The production side seems to be something's going right there. It's just such a fierce market. In relative terms we don't do to badly, the Australian hasn't diminished over the last couple of years but it is still not that high. And I think it is about looking at the distribution aspect of the Australian industry, and how we can help distributors and give them incentives to invest in distribution a bit more. Because it is very hard to cut through all the marketing that goes on every week for how many films are being released. But you know, you do get films that do break through. A film like Kenny, which is because it is good and has a good heart and it is from a good place, and people would come out of it feeling richer for it. It is not science, it is sort of a weird art form. Let's hope that a fair few will crack through.

(b) Lead William McKinnes:

This interview by Matthew Pejkovic also appeared in MediaSearch and was saved to Trove here:

William McInnes is the lead actor in the new Australian film Unfinished Sky. He spoke to Matthew Pejkovic.

Q. First off, I want to talk about the strong report developed between your character and Monic Hendrick’s character, despite the fact that there was a clear language barrier between the two. Did working with such sparse dialogue within those first few scenes prove to be a difficult challenge?

A. I guess so. Peter Duncan (writer/director) was always letting us know what was going on, and we had a little bit of rehearsal so that always lays down a bit of ground work for what happens. And Monic is a really terrific actor, and I think her performance was very strong and clear. A lot of people you will find are easy to work with, and she was certainly down to earth and she is a terrific actor. So I think her portrayal made that a lot easier.

Q. Monic appeared in the original film The Polish Bride. Did you watch the film before…

A. No mate, I didn’t. (Laughter) I just couldn’t be bothered, to tell you the truth. I probably should have, but it was probably better that I didn’t watch it any way.

Q. You come to the film with a fresh approach.

A. I guess so. It’s probably the safest way of going about it.

Q. When we first meet your character, he seems to come off as the embodiment of loneliness and anguish. Was it difficult to get to and maintain that stage? And did the films rural location help you reach that state of mind?

A. Yeah, I guess so. It was only fifteen minutes out of the town, but it felt very isolated. It felt like you were in the middle of nowhere. But the script was really strong, so that would help an actor mark their way through a performance. And if you trust the script and the director enough then all you got to basically do is stand where they want you to stand and do the things that they want you to do. But it depends on how much you demand it for yourself. Just go with what you can give, because if you hold anything back you’ll be just kicking your own arse. It just doesn’t work, I don’t think. So yeah, we just had to concentrate a bit and know that you had a set plan which omits that you release little bits of information incrementally. So hopefully it will work.

Q. The films and TV shows which you have been apart of have a very high quality to them. Do you place a high level of expectation of the scripts which you receive?

A. Well, sort of. You have to admit I made a lot of crap too! Or stuff that has not worked. But when you can, when you have the opportunity I think you can pick and choose a lot more. And it is sort of hard to do that in Australia. But when you have the opportunity – and I have been given that, I guess – it is really good to be able to do it, because you can invest in stuff which you think is good. And that is a luxury, but you don’t want to bang on too much about it because you sound like you’re up yourself (Laughter). But yeah, it is really good to be able to do that. So I have been lucky.

Q. You are a writer yourself. Have you had any thought abut writing your own screenplay?

A. Yeah, but I guess it’s easiest to write the different forms… book form is easier to write. I have written a couple of TV scripts, but nah mate, I find it hard. It’s hard work; it’s a very underestimated challenge in writing. But, yeah, certainly I have thought about it.

Q. As a veteran of the Australian film and TV industries, do you foresee Australian filmmakers stepping away from personal stories such as Unfinished Sky and move towards more genre inspired films, much like TV has done successfully with Underbelly and Sea Patrol?

A. Well, there will always be successful shows like Underbelly. There was Blue Murder 10 years ago… Blue Heelers, Water Rats, Homicide… I think Sea Patrol is pretty derivative. Underbelly is much more exciting than Sea Patrol, but people really like it. It is very popular. But if you set a film on a patrol boat, you would think, “Too Dumb. Not watching it”. There is nothing wrong with genre films. All films are genre films. And there is a genre which is art house/indie sort of thing, something like Black Balloon which is terrific, and that’s been successful. When you say genre film, I think people start thinking that it’s gonna be a chase or a road movie, and it ends up looking like second hand David Lynch. But I think Unfinished Sky is a genre film. It’s a redemption film. I think the genre net is wide, and certainly when one works it is fantastic. Wolf Creek you could say is a genre film. A slasher film?

Q. Yeah, and the one after that was a monster movie… Rogue…

A. And why did that die? I don’t know, it just sort of stopped dead in the water.

Q. Yeah, I went to a screening of Rogue. And I spoke to John Jarrett about the film, and they all had high expectations for the film. And we also spoke about genre films, and how Rogue could be the first step into a different direction for Australian films, and it didn’t really go anywhere.

A. Yeah. I don’t know why. I mean, who knows? But I think as long as Australian films tell stories that matter, and the problem is you don’t want them sort of to be … I mean, not every Australian film has a message about whales or whatever. I mean, that’s a lot of bullshit made up by who… that sort of bagging of the Australian Industry is peddled by people who’ve got a barrow to push. They want to make money out of the Australian Film Industry. And there’s not that much money in the Australian Film Industry. There is a lot of reward out of it. There is a lot of fun and there are a lot of stories to be told. And you can tell that in road movies, you can tell that in chase movies, you can tell that in adventure movies. You can tell that in comedy. And some of them are good. The problem is a lot of them are shit! A lot of the message movies are crap too. No one wants to watch people endlessly talking to another. But when they work, they’re fantastic. And by a large a lot of Australian films are good. And in fact they are a lot better than some of the crap that gets… you know…

Q. Gets peddled from overseas…

A. …in Megaplex’s. If you had Black Balloon on 300 screens than maybe it would have made more money. It was only on about 30 screens. 20 maybe. That is what was disappointing about Rogue, actually. It arrived on so many screens and I don’t know why… I think he is a terrific director Greg McLean.

Q. Yeah, likewise.

A. It’s a shame. But I just think when you say genre you got to realise that there are lots of genre films played in Australia.

20. Production Notes:

These were the production notes that accompanied the film's domestic release. Unusually the notes included filmographies for some of the creative team:

About the production

Unfinished Sky is the first production by New Holland Pictures, a company established by Australian producers Cathy and Mark Overett and Dutch producers Anton Smit and San Fu Maltha, specifically to make English language feature films.

Previously Cathy and Mark had established a highly successful international television business, which included a relationship with IdtV Film in Holland, run by Anton Smit.

“We were very keen to get into the feature film business and they were very keen to start to expand into English language films, so we sat down at a round table and discussed a number of projects which were possible, and this one rose to the surface,” Cathy explains.

“It is a remake a Dutch film called De Poolse Bruid (The Polish Bride) and it is very much one which has universal themes. It is four years since we started to make this and it is interesting that the themes even then were quite resounding, but now even more so. It is quite pertinent to today’s times both in Australia and internationally.”

Anton Smit has been visiting Australia for 30 years and was looking for the right opportunity to work here: “I’ve always been very frustrated when a beautiful Dutch movie doesn’t cross over internationally because of its language and so I’ve been toying with the idea of finding a Dutch movie and trying to translate it to make it into an English language movie.

“With this film, I had from the beginning the idea of making it into a real Australian film, a beautiful love story which would also be a political statement. In Holland, the film was about how, when the Iron Curtain went down, a mass of women from behind the Iron Curtain came to the West. Some of them were forced into prostitution. In our film the woman is from Afghanistan and she falls in love with a Queensland farmer.”

Anton and Cathy talked to several writers about adapting the script of The Polish Bride to an Australian setting. They chose Peter Duncan initially as the writer but then it quickly became apparent that Peter was also the right person to direct the film.

“Peter liked the idea, he liked the original movie, and he made it into a beautiful script, a script that went way beyond just an adaptation. It was really very much turning into his own story and he created a very authentic Australian atmosphere,” Anton says.

Peter Duncan was intrigued by the passion and humanity in the original screenplay. He felt that the film, despite some long, languid European moments, really “packed a wallop emotionally”.

“I also felt it was something that would translate readily to an Australian context because of the notion of distance. If a stranger turns up on someone’s farm in Australia then they’ve walked a very, very long way and if they’ve walked that far they’ve walked away from something very bad; so I thought that that could potentially heighten the sense of drama in setting it in an Australian context. I worked on the suspense in the adaptation and building the fear.

“Our lead female is an Afghani woman who arrives on an Australian man’s property and he has no idea what’s happened to her other than that’s she’s had a terrible time. And he’s afraid of her because she is different and represents a threat to his status quo.

“I think we live in times at the moment where even the most politically informed amongst us have been so whipped by the politics of fear and the way the world has erupted since 9/11, that - at a time when the world needs to become more cohesive and interact more - think we are finding ourselves even more wary of anything foreign and anything different and I think that comes out in almost all the politics of the West now.

“I thought this film was a great opportunity to express, in a very simple way, this affliction and that was the big creative hook for me. I try to look for the big idea in even a simple story. Politics interests me and this, I think, is a very political story. In Children of the Revolution the politics was overt, but in Unfinished Sky the characters don’t talk about the politics at all, or terrorism, or detention.

“There is a more subtle way of getting a message across and the message of this is that our lead character John, who is very wary of other people, let alone foreigners, and is very sequestered, finds that actually by opening himself to this woman and letting her into his life, his life gets better.”

Cathy Overett continues: “The politics is an undercurrent, a back story. First and foremost this film is a love story.”

In adapting the original screenplay to an Australian setting, Peter and the producers chose to make the lead female character Afghani.

“We discussed all sorts of countries in the Middle East and Asia but we settled on Afghanistan partially because it has been and remains so politically relevant, bearing in mind that my first meeting with Cathy and Anton was in 2002, so things were very heightened with what was going on in Afghanistan at the time. What also fascinated me is that whilst Afghanistan is predominantly an Islamic country, is has a very secular history. It was invaded and occupied by the Soviet Union for ten years and prior to that was a puppet state of the Soviet Union, and so you could credibly create a character who had a broader world than fundamentalist Islam. This is not a film about Islam, it is a film about a man and a woman in an extraordinary circumstance.

“The point of the picture is that it is about two individuals - both of whom are estranged; one is estranged from himself and his own world, and he hasn’t moved anywhere; the other is estranged having come halfway around the world.”

First to be cast in Unfinished Sky was Monic Hendrickx, considered one of Holland’s finest actors. While casting a star of Monic’s calibre from Holland allowed the producers to access European, as well as Australian finance, importantly Monic’s dark looks were perfect for the role. She also played the title role in the original film The Polish Bride and was intrigued to reprise the part in an Australian context.

Peter Duncan met with Monic in Amsterdam and, after a weekend working through the script together, was convinced that she was perfect to play Tahmeena: “She is such a dark beauty and she is such an intelligent and giving person and actress.”

The Polish Bride, made almost a decade ago, was Monic’s first leading role.

“I liked the idea of playing the role again, but abroad. But actually it doesn’t feel like a remake because the story has been rewritten and the role is quite different. I really like the theme - two people coming from totally different areas of the world, totally different worlds, finally, step after step they come together and bond, and I think that is a beautiful story to tell.”

When Monic, who learned the Dari language for the role, first arrived on set, many on the crew assumed she was Afghani and were later surprised to discover that she is European.

Australian icon William McInnes was cast in the role of the physically and emotionally isolated Queensland farmer, John Waldren.

“We needed someone to match Monic’s level of strength and physical presence we needed someone who is a fine actor, and someone who is comfortable in the Queensland country milieu. William just rings so true,” Peter Duncan says.

“So casting William again wasn’t ‘rocket surgery’ as they say: he’s a terribly fine actor, he’s got a look that’s a perfect complement to Monic, he’s big, he’s got a strong face, he’s incredibly intelligent and he has a great sensibility and yet he can be a very knockabout Australian fellow. So he had all the characteristics I wanted John Waldren to have - to be a fundamentally Australian character but one with a lot of depth. I think we’ve got a very rounded John and the key aspect of that is William’s contribution.”

William also grew up in Queensland so was very familiar with the countryside around Beaudesert, an hour south west of Brisbane, where the film was shot.

Monic and William didn’t meet until the first day of rehearsals. Monic flew to Australia immediately after completing another film in Europe.

“So there was a distance between them at the start and their relationship echoed the relationship of John and Tahmeena in the film. As they grew closer in the film, they also grew closer as people,” Peter says.

Tahmeena speaks Dari throughout much of the film, which is not subtitled. The audience’s experience reflects John and Tahmeena’s as they find ways to communicate without a common language.

“For me the issue of dialogue is a big departure, because I’ve made very ‘talkie’ movies previously, that’s how I’ve tended to write. There is very little dialogue in Unfinished Sky and I found this a challenge but it’s been very exciting to confine real drama to the gesture, the nuance and the physical interaction, and not rely on words. In a broad sense the film is from John’s point of view; it’s his world we are in so when Tahmeena arrives unexpectedly, speaking Dari, it is not a problem because if John doesn’t understand her then the audience doesn’t have to understand her either,” Peter says.

“Part of the joy of the journey is them finding a language of their own; it’s through visual means, it’s through emotional means, all sorts of things.”

Cathy Overett said that, with most of the story taking part on the farm, the first task was to find the right property. A stunning homestead Wyambin, empty for years, and with a structure uncannily suited to Peter Duncan’s script was found near Beaudesert, a farming community an hour from Brisbane.

“Mark and I have worked around the world in television but came home to Brisbane, so in that way it’s good to be able work close to home. This film could have been set anywhere in Australia. Pacific Film and Television Commission were very supportive and helped us to make it in Queensland. At the same time we wanted to smash stereotypes. We didn’t want a typical outback Aussie farm, we wanted something that wasn’t flat and dry, we wanted something that was hilly.

“So we cast our net really within a commutable distance of Brisbane and just lucked upon this Wyambin. Our lead character John is from a typical family who have been on the farm for three generations. They would have had some money in the past, but with rural decline, they’ve fallen on hard times. So we went looking for a house with faded grandeur. We looked at a number of properties, but when we saw Wyambin, we knew it was perfect. There are three wings to the house, but John has retreated to the back - which were essentially the servant’s quarters - as he’s retreated from the world.

Peter Duncan and Director of Photography Robert Humphreys describe it “as the house that just kept on giving.”

“It was an absolute boon when we first went to Wyambin. I looked at the enormous veranda and how there is almost no recognition of exterior or interior and I just thought ‘wow’ this just opens up a whole other world of visual possibilities. Bob thought the same thing. In the fourth week we were still finding interesting angles and interesting ways of approaching things, because the great danger of having two people on a farm is that if it becomes introspective not only emotionally but also visually, then it will become boring,” Peter says.

Production designer Laurie Faen has had a 20-year career as one of Australia’s leading art directors, including on Peter’s earlier film Children of the Revolution. He describes dressing the completely empty house for the film: “We ended up having to do quite a bit of construction to change the interior the house; and there was nothing in the house, no doorknobs, not a stick of furniture.

“It had to feel like there was a history here so we started dressing the house from ancestors up. There are a lot of family portraits, old books, a lot of layers of dressing. Quite a few of the photos and books came from the producer Cathy Overett’s house and we were lucky because I sourced a container load of props that were for another film which never got made. That provided us with knives, forks, blankets and outdoor furniture, then we went looking at a lot of local houses and in every antique shop from Brisbane south.”

Laurie’s greatest challenge was sourcing the giant jigsaw puzzle which features in the film and is the source of the film’s title. The script called for a 2000-piece puzzle that is primarily of a sky.

“Peter’s idea for the jigsaw came from the film Sleuth. Apparently in the background to the film Laurence Olivier was doing a jigsaw puzzle on a table and it was entirely white and Peter loved that idea of the impossible puzzle. So I started looking at every jigsaw puzzle I could find. On the drive up from Sydney I stopped at every country town to look at toy shops, novelty shops, hobby shops. Nothing, so I thought okay we’ll get a jigsaw puzzle made. I spent days going all the around the world on the internet to find that most jigsaw puzzles are made in England, Poland and Japan, and that no-one in Australia who could do it,” Laurie says.

Finally he found a company in NZ who could create two 1000-piece puzzles and join them together.

“Then we just had to find the image. So I started taking photos of skies, and the more I took the more I realised that Peter had in his mind a very specific sky that was hard to find. It took two weeks of taking photos every day, every time there was an interesting sky, to find the image Peter wanted.”

Peter describes the screenplay as a three-act drama. In the first act, through production design and cinematography, there is a sense of dissonance between John and Tahmeena, which softens as the characters grow closer.

Director of Photography Robert Humphreys explains: “In the first act of the film John and Tahmeena basically circle each other like two wild, wary, unkempt creatures. They don’t speak the same language and they are very wary, so the first third of the film is visually quite stark with lots of hand held camera. In the second act, the relationships starts to build and they start to trust each other and the film depicts that through much more controlled photography, we use tracks more, we use tripods, we use more choreographed camera moves and visually it is a bit more colourful. The third is where most of the drama occurs - the shoot outs, the climactic scenes - so we return to hand held camera and we make the colours much more vivid; the whole film becomes more vivid at this point.”

Robert describes the look of the film as more ‘urban’ than ‘country’, despite being set on a farm, with desaturated colours and a gritty tone. For visual reference, he and Peter considered big wide screen Westerns from the 60s and 70s such as Last Picture Show, Hud and Cool Hand Luke.

“Hopefully, what people will get into visually about this, it that is a European-style Australian film. The style isn’t entirely domestic, because I think the message of the film is universal and we didn’t want to get caught up in it being too stereotypical Australia,” Peter says.

“And while there is nowhere else but Queensland where you would find a house and a farm with an iconic woolshed like ours, and while John is the classic Australian ‘cockie’ (farmer), the way we’ve treated the story means there is a style which indicates a greater breadth to this story.”

Contributing to this breadth is the music for the film by Antony Partos of Supersonic Music Productions who has incorporated traditional Middle Eastern instruments and worked with Custard frontman Dave McCormack and the Dutch Metropole Orchestra to create the music score.

Unfinished Sky is the first feature film for Australian-Dutch production company New Holland Pictures, with Director Peter Duncan and Producers Cathy Overett and Anton Smit for New Holland Pictures. Executive Producers are Mark Overett and San Fu Maltha, with Hanneke Niens as Co-Producer. The script is by Peter Duncan based on a screenplay by Kees van der Hulst.

Unfinished Sky will be distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Palace Films, in Benelux by A-Film and by Queen Imperial in Indonesia. Fortissimo will handle international sales. Other investors are the Film Finance Corporation Australia, the Pacific Film & Television Commission, Cutting Edge Post, the Netherlands Film Fund, the Dutch broadcaster VARA and the CoBO Fund.

Principal cast

MONIC HENDRICKX as TAHMEENA

Monic Hendrickx is Holland’s foremost actress working in film. She has won three Nederlands Film Festival Awards for Best Actress for her roles in The Polish Bride, the original film from which Unfinished Sky has been adapted, Nynke (The Moving Story of a Woman Ahead of her Time) and Het Zuiden (South) and as well as a Best Actress Award from the Dutch Academy for the television drama Dwaalgast. She has recently completed roles in the seven-part drama Stellenbosch, set in South Africa, and the Dutch films Nadine and Deep.

Filmography

Stellenbosch (2007)

Nadine (2007)

Unfinished Sky (2007)

Anna (2007)

Waltz" (2006)

Uitverkorene, De (2006)

Diep (2005)

Masterclass (2005) Leef! (2005)

Gezocht: Man (2005) Media (2005)

Amazones (2004)

Verborgen gebreken (2004) 

Canada (2004)

Grijpstra & de Gier Zuiden, Het (2004) 

Kees de jongen (2003) 

Dwaalgast (2003) (TV)

De Vanger (2003)

Wonder van Máxima, Het (2003)

Dajo (2003)

Zus & zo (2001 Nynke (2001)

Soul Assassin (2001)

Diseurs de vérité, Les (2000)

Geheime dienst, De (2000)

Maten (1999) (TV)

Dichter op de zeedijk (1999)

Poolse bruid, De (1998)

Kort Rotterdams - Temper! Temper! (1998)

Man met de hond, De (1998)

All Stars (1997)

Aletta Jacobs, het hoogste streven (1995)

Interview with Monic Hendrickx

“The film is a remake of a film I made about 8 or 9 years ago and it was my first leading role, The Polish Bride, and I was asked to do it again but abroad. I liked the thought, but it doesn’t feel like a remake as it has been quite rewritten by writer and director Peter Duncan. In The Polish Bride I played a Polish woman who comes to Holland. She worked as a prostitute, but she didn’t want to, and she was beaten, and fled to eventually get to a farm, and there was a love story between the woman and the farmer. Now it is an Afghani woman who is coming to an Australian farmer so that felt like a totally different part for me to play; the language is really different, here in this story I am going to look for my daughter, because my daughter is already in Australia, in The Polish Bride, the daughter was back in Poland and I wanted to earn the money to send back to her. So it was different enough for me to want the part. I really like the theme - two people coming from totally different areas of the world, totally different worlds, finally, step by step they come together and bond, and I think that is a beautiful story to tell.

“It is a story of trust, and not trusting, and how that impacts on you. In the beginning, they are really suspicious and looking at each other, and then eventually, slowly, they get used to each other and attached to each other, and fall in love.

“Having my character speak Dari was scary, but it is not a film with a lot of dialogue for me, so that is a lucky thing. But I had to learn Dari. I had a Dari speaking teacher in Holland, he spoke it into my mini disc, and I would sit on the couch, listening, trying to remember the words. Sometimes it seems like Dutch, it is not, but there is a similar tonal quality. There are some sounds which seem connected; it is a European language actually. In Australia I had a dialogue coach who helped me to get the sounds right, the accent right.

“I became too good at driving a tractor. I had a few tractor lessons and that was one too many because it was going too smoothly in one take and I had to act as if she’d never drove a tractor. It was fun.

“Tahmeena is from Russian Afghani roots. Her husband and her father died - they were killed by the Taliban - and she let her daughter flee with neighbours. When you don’t have a husband, and you don’t have a father left, as a mother standing alone, you are nothing in Afghanistan, so she flees to Australia to find her daughter.

“Refugees all over the world have stories that are quite similar. It must be really hard to get into a totally strange and new world, not knowing the language and the culture. Tahmeena must be awfully scared at the beginning, but during the film she becomes more confident and that is a beautiful side of the story as well. By the end she is really blossoming, she comes to life again.”

WILLIAM MCINNES as JOHN WALDREN

William McInnes developed a distinguished career as a stage actor before becoming one of the country’s most loved television actors with recurring roles in A Country Practice, Blue Heelers and then, perhaps his best known role, in SeaChange. He also featured in the acclaimed mini-series My Brother Jack and The Shark Net. William’s most acclaimed film role is Look Both Ways, written and directed by his wife Sarah Watt. The film won several Australian Film Institute Awards in 2005, including Best Film and Best Director. He also appeared in Dirty Deeds, with Toni Collette, Sam Neil and Bryan Brown, Kokoda, and Irresistible with Susan Sarandon, and on television in CrashBurn, Marshall’s Law, Kath & Kim and the recent ABC drama Stepfather of the Bride.

Filmography

Major Crime (2007)

Unfinished Sky (2007)

Curtin (2007)

Stepfather of the Bride (2006) 

Kokoda (2006)

Irresistible (2006)

You and Your Stupid Mate (2005)

Look Both Ways (2005)

Blue Heelers (1994 - 2005)

Kath & Kim 2003)

CrashBurn (2003) The Shark Net (2003)

Welcher & Welcher (2003)

Marshall Law (2002)

Dirty Deeds (2002) 

Do or Die (2001) 

Bad Baby Amy (2001)

Halifax fp: The Scorpion's Kiss (2001) 

My Brother Jack (2001)

SeaChange (1999 - 2000) 

The Lost World (2000)

Ocean Girl (1994)

Aeroplane Dance (1994) 

The Heartbreak Kid (1993) 

Broken Highway (1993)

Body Melt (1993)

Snowy (1993)

Bligh (1992)

Embassy (1992) Turtle Beach (1992)

Good Vibrations (1992) (mini) 

Dead to the World (1991)

Shadows of the Heart (1990) 

Wendy Cracked A Walnut (1990) 

A Country Practice (1990) 

The Last Crop (1990) (TV)

Interview with William McInnes

“I met Peter Duncan and I really liked him and I knew some of his work and I liked that so I thought it would be terrific to work with him. I knew about Monic and her reputation as a really terrific actor, and she is - she’s the hamburger with the lot - she’s fantastic. She’s a really lovely person and she can really burn up the camera, so that’s great. And shooting something in Queensland which is where I grew up, it’s terrific that the script of this quality can be shot here in Queensland. I think it is important to share the production of Australian films around the country so that was a big plus.

“It is a story which is accessible but has also got darker issues and issues that resonate with society today. So it is entertainment with a bit of brain and a lot of heart. It’s good to have that mix, so that’s what attracted me to the script.

“The bloke I play is a farmer, a man who in a sense is the end of a line. He comes from a family that’s worked the land and worked in a manner which has created a great deal of wealth, but the glory days are behind them. He’s a very detached man, he doesn’t really engage in life, he functions and he functions well enough to keep the farm ticking over, but you have to look at how he keeps this marvellous home he had - it is not so much a home now, it is almost a mausoleum of past glories and of his own emotional life, a life he’s put on hold; and it is what happens in the film which reawakens his acceptance of life and so it’s a story of redemption.

“It’s what a person can do to themselves when they don’t move on. And it doesn’t take too much brain power to work out that’s what a country can do or a people can do if they don’t accept what’s happened and put things into perspective; they can bathe in grief and that immersion in grief and the darker thoughts that can occupy a human mind can really lead to a frightening place to be in ... it is a real grief, and it is a detached, nihilistic view of the world, which is very interesting to play... because if you act that you can look like Belugosi who needs coffee, it’s a really bad thing to actively try and play, so you’ve really got to sit on it a lot and invite the audience in; you can’t comment on what you’re doing, you just have to ‘be’ which is a bit tricky because actors like to act.

“John is suspicious not only of other people, but also of himself, which is really something you can’t make an opera out of, the less you do the more effective it is... physically he’s a big man, but his soul is very weak, which is always a nice dichotomy to have in a character.

DAVID FIELD as SERGEANT CARL ALLEN

David Field is one of Australia’s most talented character actors across film, television and theatre. He feature film credits include West, The Oyster Farmer, Opal Dream, Gettin’ Square, Tom White, The Night We Called It A Day, Chopper, Two, Blackrock, Every Night Every Night, Broken Highway and Ghosts of the Civil Dead.

On television he starred in the telemovie My Husband My Killer, winning the 2001 AFI Award for Best Actor in a Telefeature or Mini-Series. David featured in the series Grass Roots, the miniseries The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant, the telemovie Hell has Harbour Views and in the Network Ten telemovie franchise BlackJack and he has also appeared in Water Rats, Wildside, The Man from Snowy River, Blue Heelers, Police Rescue and GP.

His numerous theatre credits include the Neil Armfield productions for Belvoir St Theatre of The Tempest, The Governors Family, Picasso at the Lapin Agile and No Sugar.

BILLE BROWN as BOB POTTER

Bille Brown began working in film less than a decade ago, having built a reputation as one of Australia’s finest theatre actors. His first film role was in Fred Schepisi’s Fierce Creatures and has subsequently featured in Gillian Armstrong’s Oscar and Lucinda and Peter Duncan’s Passion. Other film roles include The Man who sued God, Serenades, The Dish and Dirty Deeds.

His many television credits include The Farm, BlackJack and Grass Roots.

Bille began his career with the Queensland Theatre Company and, later, was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in London and Stratford and has also appeared on stage at Broadway.

CHRISTOPHER SOMMERS as MIKE POTTER

Christopher Sommer’s professional debut was in the Queensland Theatre Company’s production of Proof. Other credits include theatre productions The Oracle (Brisbane Powerhouse), Zigzag Street (La Boite) and Stained (Darlinghurst Theatre), the film All My Friends are Leaving Brisbane and the television productions The Starter Wife and Love Bytes.

ROY BILLING as ROYCE

Roy Billing has appeared in all of Peter Duncan’s films, Children of the Revolution, A Little Bit of Soul, Passion, Hell Has Harbour Views and now Unfinished Sky. His numerous credits include Razzle Dazzle, Rabbit Proof Fence, Strange Bedfellow, Siam Sunset, Thunderstruck, Thank God He Met Lizzie and the television series The Secret Life of Us, Blue Heelers and Two Twisted.

Principal crew

Writer/Director - Peter Duncan

Peter Duncan graduated from the University of Sydney as a Bachelor of Arts (1986) and a Bachelor of Laws (1989) and later moved on to the Australian Film, Television & Radio School where he graduated as a Bachelor of Arts (Film & Television) in 1994.

Within two years of graduating, Peter’s first feature film, Children of the Revolution, was released to great acclaim. It was nominated for 9 AFI (Australian Film Institute) Awards in 1996 (including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay), winning three, including Best Actress for Judy Davis.

It also won Best Original Screenplay at the 1997 Film Critics’ Circle and 1996 Best Feature Film, Australian International Film Festival. The film was in official selection at many festivals including Sundance, Moscow, and San Sebastian.

Peter then went on to write and direct A Little Bit of Soul (1997), starring Geoffrey Rush, David Wenham and Francis O’Connor, and Passion (1999), which starred Barbara Hershey and Richard Roxburgh. Passion won three AFI Awards.

After a number of years dedicated to writing, Unfinished Sky brings Peter back to directing feature films.

Filmography

Feature films:

Unfinished Sky (2007) - writer/director

Romulus, My Father (2007) - script consultant

Passion (1999) - director

A Little Bit of Soul (1977) - writer/director/producer

Children of the Revolution (1976) - writer/director

Telefeatures:

Hell Has Harbour Views (2005) - writer/director

Documentary:

Faces of War (1995) - writer

Producer - Cathy Overett

Unfinished Sky is Cathy’s first feature film, having worked in documentary and television light entertainment for 17 years. She was a producer/writer/director in the film unit of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in the UK for several years and has also worked in politics, publications and advertising.

Producer - Anton Smit

Anton has been Creative Manager of various theatre companies in the Netherlands, Head of the Drama & Entertainment Department of public broadcaster VARA, Programme Director of IdtV and Consultant to the Dutch Film Fund. He founded IdtV

Film BV in 1999 along with producer Hanneke Niens to make quality films for a mass audience. Their films, including Family (2001), Godforsaken (2003) and Cloaca (2003) have consistently won awards, with their Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film 2004 for Twin Sisters being a highlight.

Executive Producer - San Fu Maltha

San Fu is a highly successful distributor and producer with vast experience in the film industry. After working with Warner Brothers and Columbia Tri Star in the Netherlands, he set up A-Film Distribution with Pim Hermeling, distributing films like Magnolia, Hable con Ella, Mulholland Drive, All about My Mother, Science Fiction, The Pianist, Chicken Run and The Lord of the Rings-trilogy. His production company Fu Works recently produced the Paul Verhoeven film Black Book. And he has interests in a number of companies including Terras in Belgium, New Holland Pictures in Australia and distributor/exhibitor Blitz in Indonesia.

Executive Producer - Mark Overett

Mark has established an international reputation as a Creative Producer of light entertainment and light factual television. He worked with production companies in over 15 countries, particularly as a format consultant on the game show In the Dark. Over recent years he consulted and EP for broadcasters and production companies including TVNZ, IdtV (Holland), Distraction Formats (Canada) and Screentime (NZ).

Director of Photography - Robert Humphreys

Robert (Bob) Humphreys won several major awards in 2004/2005 for his work on Somersault, directed by Cate Shortland, including the AFI Award for Best Cinematography, the IF Award for Best Cinematography, the Film Critics Circle of Australia Award for Best Cinematography and the Award of Distinction from the Australian Cinematographers Society. Bob also recently shot the acclaimed feature Suburban Mayhem, the UK/Australian feature Opal Dream and the two-part television movie The Silence. His other feature film credits are Walking on Water and Mullet and his television work includes Fat Cow Motel, Wildness, Gulpilil - One Red Blood and The Diplomat.

Production Designer - Laurie Faen

Laurie Faen has had a 20-year career as an Art Director including on Peter Duncan’s Children of the Revolution, Candy, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Swimming Upstream, Sirens and Doing Time for Patsy Cline. Laurie has also worked as an animatronics supervisor on several films including Babe and Young Einstein.

Costume Designer - Jean Turnbull

Jean Turnbull was costume designer on the television mini-series Through My Eyes and several other international productions including The Crocodile Hunter, Cybergirl, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Tempted.

Editor - Suresh Ayyar

Suresh Ayyar has been nominated for six AFI Awards for Best Achievement in Editing, winning in 1994 for Bad Boy Bubby. His other credits include Romulus My Father, Footy Legends, Hating Alison Ashley, Thank God He Met Lizzie, Fresh Air, The Interview, Dingo and Dreaming.

Composer - Antony Partos

Antony Partos, partner in Supersonic Music Productions, has composed the scores for many Australian films and television productions including The Home Song Stories, The Silence, Walking on Water, Garage Days, Soft Fruit and Praise and the New Zealand film Crush, for which he won the NZ Film Award for Best Film Score.

Make-up/Hair Supervisor - Bliss (Vivienne) Macgillicuddy

Bliss has had senior roles in the make up departments of such films as The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Kokoda, The Chronicles of Narnia, Peter Pan and The Heartbreak Kid.

21. Queensland Government press release:

The Queensland government's PFTC released this press release dated 19th June 2008 under the header Queensland's Unfinished Sky Opens Today in Australian Theatres, Trove here:

Brisbane production company New Holland Pictures today marks a significant milestone as their first feature film, Unfinished Sky, is theatrically released in Australia.

This film has become a hit on the international festival circuit since winning Audience Favourite when it premiered at the 2007 Brisbane International Film Festival (BIFF).

"Unfinished Sky is a testament to the impressive creative talent we have within our local film and television industry and their ability to make a quality film with international appeal in Queensland on a modest budget," Pacific Film and Television Commission (PFTC) Chief Executive Officer Robin James said.

"It's been well-received at international film markets and formed part of the Official Selection at the Toronto and Pusan International Film Festivals in 2007. Most recently, it won Best Picture at The Method Film Fest in California in April.

"Today's release of Unfinished Sky is particularly timely given that an independent report commissioned by the Film Finance Corporation (FFC) confirmed last week that Australian audiences want to see more local stories on screen.

"Queensland is certainly delivering in terms of the theatrical release of locally-made films. In 2008, we've seen independent feature All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane released, and after Unfinished Sky, three more feature films - Daybreakers, Acolytes and In Her Skin - are due in cinemas in coming months.

"PFTC provided investment finance to Unfinished Sky, which will be distributed in Australia by Palace Films. Daybreakers, In Her Skin and Acolytes also received development and investment finance through the PFTC."

Unfinished Sky is a contemporary Australian adaptation of the 1998 Dutch hit The Polish Bride from writer-director Peter Duncan, producers Cathy Overett and Anton Smit and executive producers Mark Overett and San Fu Maltha.

Starring Redcliffe's own William McInnes, Dutch beauty Monic Hendrickx and Brisbane actors Billie Brown and Christopher Sommers, it is a powerful and poetic drama which follows an isolated Australian farmer and an illegal Afghan refugee as they peel away layers of hurt and mistrust to rediscover freedom, beauty and choice.

"Award-winning cinematographer Robert Humphreys shot the film predominantly on location at Boonah and has captured the Queensland landscape beautifully in Unfinished Sky. He is now working on local feature film, Triangle," Mr James said.

"With a full slate of follow-up projects in various stages of completion, New Holland is definitely a company to watch."

Media contact: Kylie Rathborne on 3224 5143

22. Production company New Holland Pictures press release announcing shoot:

The production company New Holland Pictures issued a press release under the header The Sky's the limit for new Queensland film ..., Trove here:

The first feature film for Brisbane-based New Holland Pictures, Unfinished Sky will commence shooting in the Beaudesert area in September.

Written and directed by Peter Duncan (Children of the Revolution) and starring William McInnes and leading Dutch actress Monic Hendrickx, Unfinished Sky is a powerful love story with a thriller twist.

“Peter has written a beautiful script,” said  producer Cathy Overett. “He’s embodied universal themes of rural decline and illegal immigration in our two heroes.  And he’s woven a poetic love story around a thriller element that will resonate with audiences around the world.”

“With William and Monic in the leads, the film promises to be positively bristling with sensuality and suspense.”

New Holland Pictures is a joint venture between Brisbanites Mark Overett and Cathy Overett, and Dutch partners Anton Smit, San Fu Maltha and IdtV Film. This partnership has enabled New Holland Pictures to attract European finance to help make what is inherently an Australian story with universal themes.

Unfinished Sky is being distributed in Australia/New Zealand by Palace, in Benelux by A-Film, and internationally by Fortissimo. PFTC and FFC are also investors in the project.

New Holland Pictures has a number of other feature scripts in development, including the iconic Brisbane story Zigzag Street, based on the novel by Nick Earls.

Sales and Distribution: Palace Films, Fortissimo Films, A Film, Vara, Queen Imperial PTE

Synopsis: An illegal refugee and a reclusive farmer fall deeply in love, despite their resistance, recovering their faith in themselves and their trust in humanity.

23. Fujifilm press release:

Fujifilm seized the chance to boast about the film (and other Australian films) using Fuji film stock. It had the header Major Australian Movies Shot With Fujifilm Stock, and was saved to Trove here:

FUJIFILM Australia today gave details of three new Australian movies and one recent AFI winner shot exclusively on FUJIFILM stock. FUJIFILM General Manager Recording Media/Motion Picture Film Marc Van Agten said, “It is a very exciting time for the Australian film industry and these projects are a good indication of the quality of movies we can expect to see throughout 2009.”

The first of the new movies is BRAN NUE DAE directed by Rachel Perkins and shot by DOP Andrew Lesnie on ETERNA 250T and ETERNA 500T (Lesnie also shot the Australian film Love’s Brother on FUJIFILM stock). BRAN NUE DAE stars Geoffrey Rush, Magda Szubanski, Deborah Mailman, Ernie Dingo and Missy Higgins. As Australia's first Aboriginal musical the source material is semi-autobiographical, based on the story of writer Jimmy Chi's life in Broome and is a 3,000km journey of self discovery through spectacular landscape.

The second new film is BEAUTIFUL KATE directed by Rachel Ward and shot by DOP Andrew Commiss on ETERNA 250D, ETERNA 500T and F64D. Starring Rachel Griffiths, Bryan Brown and Ben Mendelsohn BEAUTIFUL KATE tells the story of a writer, Ned Kendall, who is asked to return to the family home by his sister Sally, to say goodbye to his father who is dying. Once there Ned starts having memories of his beautiful twin sister and himself when they were children.

The third movie on the list currently being shot in Australia on FUJIFILM stock is CHARLIE & BOOTS directed by Dean Murphy and shot by DOP Roger Lanser on ETERNA 250D, ETERNA 500T and ETERNA 160T (Lanser also shot the Australian films Strange Bedfellows, The Crop and Till Human Voices Wake Us on FUJIFILM stock). CHARLIE & BOOTS stars Australian icon Paul Hogan, Shane Jacobson (aka Kenny) and Roy Billing and follows a father and son who travel from Victoria to Cape York to fulfill their lifelong ambition to fish off Australia's northern tip.

UNFINISHED SKY was directed by Peter Duncan and stars William McInnes, Monic Hendickx and David Field. DOP Robert Humphreys shot the film on ETERNA 250D, ETERNA 500T, ETERNA 250T AND F64D and recently won the AFI cinematography award for his work on the movie. (Humphreys also shot the Australian films Suburban Mayhem, Somersault, Walking on Water and Mullet on FUJIFILM stock). UNFINISHED SKY is the story of an outback farmer that takes in an Afghani woman who has fled from a brothel.

Marc Van Agten concluded, “We are delighted that FUJIFILM is the stock of choice for such a talented group of DOPs and for such high quality films. Year-on-year we are seeing an increasing number of DOPs and cinematographers choose FUJIFILM products and based on the excellent calibre of the movies they produce, the results clearly speak for themselves.”

FUJIFILM is also the major contributing sponsor of the ACS.

For more press information contact Salvatore Di Muccio at Well Above on +61 412 64 99 64 or at salvatore@wellabove.com

24. Production company - Queensland government press release:

There was a steady flow of press releases about the production company.

This one, under the header New Holland Pictures Pty Ltd - telling our stories, was saved to Trove here:

New Holland Pictures Pty Ltd is an international film and television production company with its heart and soul anchored in Australian psyche and culture, and its eye on the global horizon.

The company is a joint venture between Queensland producers Mark Overett and Cathy Overett and Anton Smit, IdtV Film and Fu Works of Holland.

Between them, the three principals have a wealth of international production experience and success behind them. Mark explains the group’s approach.

“We’re storytellers – we work closely with writers and directors to develop and produce quality, creative programs, across all genres, and on realistic budgets.”

Unfinished Sky

Their latest story is Unfinished Sky, a film shot in the Beaudesert countryside south of Brisbane. Well-known Australian actor William McInnes co-stars with leading Dutch actress Monic Hendrickx (pictured below). The film – a love story with a thriller twist, is about an illegal refugee and a reclusive farmer – and explores themes of freedom, hope and choice.

Peter Duncan (Children of the Revolution, Passion, Little Bit of Soul, Hell has Harbour Views) is directing this $4.3m production due for release in late 2007.

As well as Unfinished Sky, New Holland Pictures Pty Ltd has several other projects in the pipeline, including the romantic comedy Zigzag Street (based on the iconic Brisbane novel by Nick Earls), the mystery feature Strangerland, a television lifestyle-entertainment series and CrossWires - a television drama series – the latter, a joint initiative with the Pacific film and Television Commission.

The Queensland factor

According to Mark Overett, Queensland is a great place to make movies.

“Queensland’s climate is ideal for film-making – not just the reliable sunshine, but economically as well.  Queensland’s generous tax rebate and 12.5 per cent state labour incentive really does make a difference.”

“I think the State Government’s long-term support and patience is starting to pay dividends.  Apart from the overseas productions, right now we have three or four local features as well as local drama series in production in Queensland.  This is tremendously exciting – and augers well for the future of the industry in this state.”

Contact the New Holland Pictures web site for details.

25. End of shoot:

This QPIX story, credited to the administrator, announced the end of the film's shoot, saved to Trove here under the header UNFINISHED shoot finished:

The new Australian feature film UNFINISHED SKY, starring William McInnes and Dutch film star Monic Hendrickx, completed principal photography in Queensland in October.

The romantic thriller - written and directed by Peter Duncan (CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION, PASSION, HELL HAS HARBOUR VIEWS) - was filmed around the towns of Beaudesert and Boonah in south-east Queensland for five weeks.

William McInnes (LOOK BOTH WAYS, SEACHANGE) stars as a man who, after the suspicious death of his wife, has withdrawn to the seclusion of his farm. Monic Hendrickx plays an illegal refugee Tahmeena. In her bid for freedom from the ravages of Afghanistan, Tahmeena has found herself unwittingly sold into sex slavery in a small Australian country town.

When the paths of these two damaged people cross, neither wants the other in their life. Despite their resistance, they fall deeply in love, recovering their faith in themselves and their trust in humanity.

The film is being produced by Cathy Overett and Anton Smit at New Holland Pictures. Executive producers are Mark Overett and San Fu Maltha, with Hanneke Niens as co-producer.

The script is by Peter Duncan based on the screenplay of Kees van der Hulst's earlier Dutch-language film THE POLISH BRIDE.

UNFINISHED SKY is the first feature film from New Holland Pictures, a joint venture between Queenslanders Cathy Overett & Mark Overett and Dutch partners Anton Smit, IdtV Film and San Fu Maltha.

The company, which also produces a range of television programs for the Australian and international market, is developing a substantial slate of features, including ZIGZAG STREET (written by Sarah Neal and based on the novel by Nick Earls), STRANGERLAND (written by Fiona Seres - LOVE MY WAY, directed by Kim Farrant - NAKED ON THE INSIDE and starring Anthony La Paglia) and NZ film SEPARATION CITY (written by Tom Scott and directed by Danny Mulheron).

26. The Impending release:

The film's producers did their best to put a positive spin on things, with this story by Belinda Seenedy running in the South East Advertiser on 4th June 2008, under the header Sky is limit for new film, Trove here: 

CANNON HILL, June 4: When the lights dim and the cinema screen flickers to life on June 19, producers Mark and Cathy Overett will see their labour of love finally reach fruition.

The couple, who run Cannon Hill-based New Holland Pictures, worked hard to secure a national release for their first feature film, Unfinished Sky, which will initially open on 30 screens.

Unfinished Sky stars William McInnes, pictured, and Dutch star Monic Hendrickx and was filmed on a budget of $4.3 million in Boonah and Beaudesert early last year.

Ms Overett was at the famous Cannes Film Festival this month selling the locally-made love story to international buyers.

Sitting in New Holland Pictures’ Cannon Hill office, her husband said the film won its first award for best picture at the 2008 Method Fest in Santa Monica.

“We’ve got high expectations for the film which is based on an original Dutch film from 10 years ago called The Polish Bride,’ Mr Overett said.

“It’s a great story.”

The Overetts started their production company three years ago after producing television dramas, game shows and documentaries here and overseas.

* Unfinished Sky opens in cinemas on June 19

But there was a sense of malaise and gloom surrounding the industry, and in the end, Unfinished Sky didn't help alleviate it.

27. The Australian industry's Box Office Crisis (another one):

2007-2009 were years of fear for the industry, with box office doing badly. Jim Schembi wrote a general story about the issue, gloomily titled At Death's Door - an industry lost in the dark, saved to Trove here. Unfinished Sky barely rated a mention by Schembri as he discussed the AFI contenders, though the film would do well at the awards, while struggling at th box office:

Amidst the swirl of hype attending the launch two weeks ago of Baz Luhrmann's wannabe blockbuster Australia, a telling question kept coming up from the local and international media.

Could this one film be the Saviour of the Australian film industry? If it succeeded would the dire fortunes of our failing film culture go into magical, miraculous, glorious turnaround?

It was at once a desperate and silly notion. If the idea of one popular film saving a troubled industry had any traction in reality Australian cinema would have gone into full bloom after Happy Feet. And after Moulin Rouge. And after The Wogboy, Crocodile Dundee, The Castle and Crackerjack.

It's a lovely fantasy, but the harsh truth is that hit Australian films are freak events. We celebrate when they happen, but they do so despite the narrow, boutique mindset that equates populism and commercial success with vulgarity and so continues to produce films that barely register with the public they are supposed to serve.

Australians love going to the movies, purchasing between $10-12 million worth of movie tickets per week. But how much of that goes to local fare? The figures vary from 4% in a good, Happy Feet-blessed year, to a laughable 2% in an average year, to a downright dismal 0.9% for 2008.

When figures are that negligible one understands veteran director/producer George Miller (Mad Max, Babe, Happy Feet) when he quips that "we don't have a film industry any more". He might be overstating the situation - but not by much.

After 35 years and an investment of around $1.5 billion taxpayer dollars, Australian cinema still occupies only the very margins of the marketplace - something starkly reflected by the "major" films nominated for this year's AFI Awards.

Up for best film and best director are The Jammed, The Black Balloon, The Square and Unfinished Sky. These four films had a combined box-office of about $3.9 million.

This is less than the take of such mid-range, non-blockbuster fare as Disney's cute-dog movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua ($6.6 million), the Kiera Knightly period piece The Duchess ($5m), the chick flick Nights in Rodanthe ($4 million), the caper movie The Bank Job ($4.4m) and even the stoner flick Pineapple Express ($4m).

For a far more disturbing gauge of the film industry's peril, however, compare that four-film box-office figure against the $7 million budget for the Australian film The Tender Hook, a period film set in Sydney during the jazz age. It's a film almost nobody has heard of. And no wonder. Its take at the ticket counter? Less than $40,000!

Yet somehow this titanic box-office catastrophe has slipped by with virtually no comment, when it should have sounded a five-alarm warning. If anything signals that the industry is in deep trouble it's that in 2008 it can still casually produce such a monumental failure without anybody raising an eyebrow or being held to account. (Requests to interview the film's writer/director Jonathan Ogilvie were rejected.)

A big part of the industry's malaise has been the prevalence of audience-averse doom-and-gloom themes. While The Square delivered a ripping, plot-driven thriller, the other three best film nominees share a quality too common to too many Australian films - they are heavy.

The Jammed was a searing, low-budget expose on the sex slave trade in Melbourne. Unfinished Sky created an intense drama between a troubled man and an Afghan refugee. The Black Balloon dealt with a family living with an autistic child. It was the most successful of the crop, taking $1.5 million in five weeks - about the same as what the coarse teen comedy Sex Drive made in two.

When splendidly written and directed, as with The Jammed and Look Both Ways (which swept the AFIs in 2005), dark themes can make for thrilling cinema. More often than not, though, this preoccupation with bleak, depressing topics and intense character studies about damaged lives are coupled with poorly structured, inert narratives that have no third act, and often don't even have a second.

Ten Empty, Men's Group and Bitter & Twisted are prime examples from the current crop. All were well-meaning, well-acted films about serious subjects, but they simply didn't move. Angst and anguish are fine starting points for any drama, but without character arcs or any sense of emotional resolution the films unspool like acting workshops rather than anything intended for an audience.

The fate of The Square, which is up for seven awards, serves as a case study for many of the problems besetting so many Australian films.

The film was a very well-made, audience-oriented genre piece that did not want for pace, action, humour or tension, and the expert direction by Nash Edgerton delivered the sorts of thrills we normally associate with quality multiplex programmers from the US. Yet the film died at the box office, taking less than $300,000.

One big problem was the film's lack of profile before landing in cinemas. As with most Australian films it just seemed to pop up out of nowhere before disappearing almost as quickly. Lack of marketing has long been a major issue with local films, and whereas American films allocate a good portion of their effort to branding a film in the marketplace, here it remains an afterthought.

It's likely The Square also fell victim to the allergy local audiences have now developed for local films after enduring decades of dreck. Even Edgerton, speaking bravely about the failure of his film, agreed that most punters subscribe to the adage that "if it's Australian, it must be bad" .

This syndrome also seems to have claimed Gillian Armstrong's Death Defying Acts (up for six awards). A visit by the charming, photogenic, media-friendly international star Catherine Zeta-Jones gave the film huge publicity, yet it too, tanked. Opening on 125 screens in March it died after two weeks with a take of less than $500,000.

People certainly knew about the film. But they also knew it was Australian. The film industry as a whole simply can't recover until that fact ceases to be a punchline.

As veteran producer Anthony I Ginnane memorably stated in his inaugural speech as president of the Screen Producers Association of Australia in early November: "If they premiered most of the Australian films of the last 24 months on an airplane people would be walking out in the first 20 minutes - and that's not good."

Again, an overstatement - but not by much.

Schembri then went on to discuss likely AFI contenders for the year, proving it's always unwise to trust reviewers for their skills of prediction:

Although Dee McLachlan's astonishing sex-slave drama The Jammed is easily the best film of the year and deserves the top two doorstops for best film and director, sentiment will favour the comparative success of the autism drama The Black Balloon.

Written and directed by first-timer Elissa Down, the film's 11 nominations is a triumph of feel-good emotion over good judgment. The film is strewn with glaring inconsistencies, story holes and poor characterisations, yet it is also up for best original screenplay along with the appalling teen flick Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger.

Both films demonstrate how the decades-old problem of script development still dogs the industry. McLachlan deserves the award for The Jammed, and Joel Edgerton and Matthew Dabner certainly did their homework on The Square, a film that will hopefully find new life on DVD.

Emma Lung simply must win best actress for her outstanding performance as the sex slave in The Jammed, and though William McInnes deserves best actor for Unfinished Sky, Rhys Wakefield will likely take it for Black Balloon. His co-star Luke Ford will also take best supporting actor, as playing the disabled always means an unfair advantage, as Kate Winslet so memorably explained in Extras.

Best supporting actress should go to Saskia Burmeister, all-but-unrecognisable as a Russian prostitute in The Jammed but the paperweight will probably go to Toni Collette for Black Balloon.

On the documentary front the high-profile love letter to Ozploitation Not Quite Hollywood is certainly entertaining and superbly made, but Beyond Our Ken, an expose of the self-empowerment cult Kenja, demonstrates just how powerful the documentary form can be when the camera happens to be in the right place at the wrong time.

28. The original film - a script controversy I:

Perhaps one of the reasons that writer Kees van der Hulst had only two credits and is relatively unknown in the film industry was explained in a story that ran in deVolkskrant on 27th March 1998. Being a Google translation, it is rough, with the header At The Polish Bride only scenario counts:

Only a handful of moviegoers will notice: the words in which screenwriter Kees van der Hulst distances himself from the film adaptation by director Karim Traïdia at the end titles of The Polish Bride....

Van der Hulst is in good company. Writer Margo Minco did the same in 1985 with the film adaptation that Kees van Oostrum made of Het bitterekruid.

No producer considers such a statement additional advertising for his film. It was therefore a bit non-tactical that Traïdia wondered in de Volkskrant on Wednesday from when 'the scriptwriter's blessing' would rest on changes in a script by the director.

In a telephone response, Van der Hulst says that Traïdia has made changes to the second version of his screenplay without consulting him. He found that out before shooting. Hence the 'additional contract' with producer Motel Films to indemnify himself from liability and to make it clear that he does not support the adaptation.

“In the first draft, we went through the scenario scene by scene. That had to be done in a hurry. Major changes usually happen in the second version. I was amazed that he had changed things behind my back.' He finds the end of the film especially confusing. "That shooting now comes out of the blue."

Van der Hulst thinks that the screenwriter is a neglected child in the Netherlands. 'As the spiritual father of The Polish Bride, I cannot erase myself. I've worked too long and too hard on it.'

According to Van der Hulst, Traïdia believes that only the director can write the screenplay. 'In doing so he denies the existence of the independent screenwriter.' Wrong, he thinks. 'The screenwriter is the key figure to whom the subsidy providers' counters open. Only because of that pack of paper.'

29. The original film - a script controversy II:

The director Karim Traïdia addressed the controversy in an interview here - again a rough Google translation, with the header Unusual clause:

The Polish Bride is one of four films from the Route 2000 project, in which promising directors were given the opportunity to make a low-budget feature film. In collaboration with the Dutch Film Fund and VPRO, producer Motel Films selected Kees van der Hulst's screenplay and asked Traïdia if he wanted to film it. At the same time, producer IJswater Films came on board. In the credits of the film, the following text rolls past: “The author of the screenplay of The Polish Bride distances himself from the director's adaptation of the screenplay.”

Lack of time and clear agreements led to this unusual clause, according to Traïdia. “I thought his version of the screenplay was too long. I only had twenty shooting days and decided to use less dialogue. The emphasis came to lie more on the middle part, on the relationship between Anna and Henk. I worked with Kees on a new version for a while, but I wondered when the moment would come when I could go my own way. I had asked Kees to make some changes after we had gone through everything together. He did not come up with a new version then.”

“In the meantime I was afraid that we had worked for nothing, because I only had fifteen days left for the whole pre-production. Then I removed a number of things from the screenplay myself — no major changes, because in the end I stuck to the original screenplay for ninety percent. Maybe Kees wasn't happy with the way I did it, but he knew I was going to change it. Then I literally asked him if he wanted to stop production, if he really didn't agree with my version. He didn't want that and I never talked about it again. Suddenly he wanted that disclaimer in the credits. I find that strange, but it is his right. It's okay; it was a good lesson for both of us. The next time I work with a screenwriter, I will make much clearer agreements.”