TASMANIAN DEVIL
IN APRIL 1996, IN PORT ARTHUR, a coastal town on the island of Tasmania, the unthinkable happened. A young man named Martin Bryant entered a waterside cafe and started shooting indiscriminately, before turning on those in a nearby gift shop and car park. In total, he killed 35 people, wounding a further 23. It remains the worst mass murder in Australian history. “That day – and what happened – is something that’s really hard to discuss, ” says director Justin Kurzel, scrambling for words when Total Film meets him in a leafy Cannes garden to unpack his new film Nitram.
Kurzel is no stranger to violence in his movies: like his blood-soaked takes on videogame or mythic Aussie outlaw Ned Kelly in It’s been that way since his 2011 debut , the Adelaide-set true story about a series of grim murders, scripted by fellow Australian Shaun Grant. It was Grant who decided to pen a film about Bryant, sending it to Kurzel to take a look.
