Writer-director Jennifer Kent has offered a taste of what audiences can expect next from her emerging talent. Her feature directorial debut, “The Babadook,” won rave reviews from critics, and the horror film went on to win three Aussie Oscars, including Best Director for Kent. (Note: As this A.V. Club article points out, Kent is the ninth woman to win this accolade, whereas Kathryn Bigelow is the only female director to be honored with the American equivalent.) In a new interview with The Guardian, the Australian helmer shared details about two upcoming projects: “The Nightingale,” a drama about “the pointlessness of revenge,” and “Alice + Freda Forever,” a teen lesbian love story.
Set in Tasmania, “The Nightingale” takes place in 1829, during what The Guardian describes as “a particularly brutal period of colonial history which all but annihilated Tasmania’s Indigenous peoples.” As compared to “The Babadook,” Kent said, “It’s certainly not a horror film, but it’s a pretty horrific world.” Tasmania is where the British empire sent their “worst repeat criminals” — those that they “couldn’t handle”: rapists, murderers, and the like. “It was seen as hell-on-earth at the time,” Kent explained.
The film, scheduled for a 2017 release, follows a “21-year-old Irish convict called Claire [who] chases a British soldier through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. She enlists the services of an Indigenous tracker called Billy, who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.”
“The Nightingale” isn’t based on a true story, but Kent worked closely and collaboratively with Jim Everett, a Tasmanian Aboriginal elder. “He said to me, ‘Jen, this is a shared story,’ and in a way I felt this gave me the permission to tell it,” she recalled. Kent sought Everett’s advice for the script, casting, and shooting. He’ll also be present on set and “working closely with Indigenous actors to make sure all cultural protocol is respected.” Kent shared, “I couldn’t go down to Tasmania — which was the worst place, the worst attempted annihilation of a culture — and not do this the right way.”
“Alice + Freda Forever” also tackles crime, albeit from a very different angle. The film is an adaptation of Alexis Coe’s 2014 novel centering on an 1892 true crime story in Memphis, Tennessee. Kent was handed the book by a producer who said, “I’ve got this dark strange lesbian gothic love story,” a pitch she couldn’t resist. No word on when to expect “Alice + Freda Forever,” but it’ll be sometime after “The Nightingale’s” release.
