The Babadook director Jennifer Kent has defended her new film The Nightingale as an “honest and necessary depiction” of a brutal historical moment, after rape scenes and graphic violence caused some ticket holders to walk out of screenings on Sunday and Monday night.
The film, written and directed by Kent, is set in 1825 Tasmania during the frontier war massacres of Indigenous Australians.
In fact, Kent said, when it came to colonial violence against Indigenous Australians in Tasmania, the film actually held back.
“Whilst The Nightingale contains historically accurate depictions of colonial violence and racism towards our Indigenous people, the film is not ‘about’ violence …