Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2017: #17. Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale

The Nightingale

Director: Jennifer Kent
Writer: Jennifer Kent

Before her notable 2014 debut The Babadook (which premiered to ecstatic review out of Sundance) had reached theatrical release, Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent had this project on the backburner. The Nightingale is a harrowing period piece about a young woman in 1829 Tasmania who teams up with an Aboriginal man to seek vengeance for the murder of her family. Exploring dark colonialist Australian history, the tone of the project has been compared to Joseph Conrad.

Cast: Not available.

Production Co./Producer(s): Causeway Films (Kristina Ceyton)

U.S. Distributor: Rights available.

Release Date: Slated for production in Tasmania in early 2017, this could may end up being a 2018 release if Kent doesn’t have this ready in time for a late fall release, such as Venice (or she could be potentially wooed by TIFF for their Platform program ). However, seeing as she already has another project lined up after this (an adaptation of Alexis Coe’s novel Alice+Freda Forever, a period piece set in 1892), we are hoping to see her sophomore film sooner rather than later.

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