The Nightingale (2018)

SWITCH. June 14, 2019

★ 6/10

Even with its flaws, this feminist Western is too violent, too dirty, too bloody, and too barbaric to be forgotten easily. When the lights in the cinema came on, the woman next to me was crying and, a few rows over, someone murmured that they had now had PTSD. 'The Nightingale’ is not an easy film to watch and certainly not one to expect to come out of laughing or feeling terrific. But it will make you will feel something, which is a rare thing for a film to be able to do today. - Jake Watt Read Jake's full article... https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-the-nightingale-a-blunt-and-brutal-period-piece Head to https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/sff for more Sydney Film Festival reviews.

Stephen Campbell December 14, 2019

★ 8/10

**_A superb, albeit harrowing drama about colonial violence, misogyny, and racism_** >_Whether the Blacks deserve any mercy at the hands of the pioneering squatters is an open question, but that they get none is certain. They are a doomed race, and before many years they will be completely wiped out of the land._ - Harold Finch-Hatton; _Advance Australia! An Account of Eight Year's Work, Wandering and Amusement in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria_ (1885) >_If Judas Chamberlain can find a black, or brown or yellow race in Asia or Africa, that has as high a standard of civilisat__ion and intelligence as the whites, that is as progressive as the whites, as brave, as sturdy, as good nation-making material, and that can intermarry with the whites without the mixed progeny showing signs of deterioration, that race is welcome in Australia regardless of colour._ - _The Bullet…

Manuel São Bento December 30, 2019

★ 8/10

Jennifer Kent delivered one of the best horror movies of the decade, The Babadook. With The Nightingale, only her second feature film, she offers one of the most visually brutal, shocking, jaw-dropping, violent revenge stories ever. This movie is the definition of “not for everyone.” Rating: A-

badelf February 2, 2026

★ 10/10

**The Nightingale** (2018) *Directed by Jennifer Kent* Jennifer Kent's *The Nightingale* is a cold, hard look at colonialism, unflinching in its depiction of the brutality that empires are built upon. Set in 1825 Tasmania, it follows Clare (Aisling Franciosi), a young Irish convict, and Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), an Aboriginal tracker, through the wilderness as they pursue a British officer who has committed unspeakable atrocities. This is not entertainment; this is witness, testimony, a reckoning with historical crimes that we would prefer to forget. Kent has produced an incredible piece of cinema here, one that sits alongside the great historical memory films like *Schindler's List*, *I'm Still Here*, *Parallel Mothers*, and *There Is No Evil* that refuse to let us look away from what was done in our names or in the names of our ancestors. The brutality and violence are hard t…