10 Key Takeaways From Camerimage Cinematography Film Festival

variety.com:

Will Tizard Contributor With enough passion and grit, powerful, personal stories made one-man-band style can stand up against the best work of top Hollywood talent with far greater budgets. Warwick Thornton’s “The New Boy,” inspired by his own experiences of being packed off to a Christian boarding school in Australia as a youngster, was in development for 18 years, finally coming together when Cate Blanchett read the script and suggested taking it on through her company Dirty Films.

After working with him to adapt the lead role into the character of a nun who fills in for a priest whose death has been kept secret, the project began to come together, with newcomer actor Aswan Reid as the titular boy who begins to work wonders.

It just won the top Camerimage Film Festivalprize, the Golden Frog, beating out work by some of Hollywood’s most lauded directors and cinematographers.

Thornton’s background as a Kaytetye man born and raised in Alice Springs who struggled to get by for years, first as a radio DJ, then as a cameraman who made his own short films, will inspire many who dream of filmmaking careers but find themselves far outside the centers of gravity of the industry.