Warwick Thornton is an Australian film director, screenwriter and cinematographer of rare power and skill, whose latest film The New Boy stars Cate Blanchett alongside newcomer Aswan Reid in the story of a young Aboriginal boy’s arrival at a remote monastery run by a renegade nun.
Thornton came to prominence winning the Camera D’Or for his debut film Samson And Delilah at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. In 2017, his film Sweet Country became his second film to win Best Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
Thornton’s latest film, The New Boy, began playing at film festivals around the time of the referendum in Australia which resulted in a vote of 60% against the proposal to “recognise the First People of Australia”. As the film comes to cinemas in the UK, we spoke to Thornton about making The New Boy, what happens when indigenous spirituality comes into contact with organised religion, releasing the film in a time political turmoil, and what it has to say about the world…
My new film The New Boy took a long time. But it took a while, because I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. It was a good idea but it was a bad script. Well, actually, it was a bad idea too – because I was writing a film about a child and a priest, not realising that it would have all these connotations.
Then Cate Blanchett rang me. We’d met before at the London Film Festival but I’d forgotten. How embarrassing is that? But when Covid happened, and we were all stuck, Cate rang and said: ‘the world’s in trouble, life’s too short, let’s go make a movie’.
We did everything but talk about making a movie. We were sussing each other out. And I think I got away with it. We talked about books, she would talk about a 16th century artist, then I would talk about Adam & The Ants or Ultravox. But we got on like a house on fire. We found out we were compatible to make a movie. But what the hell to make?