Stephen A. Russell

Hugo Weaving’s acting career has brought him international acclaim, but his latest film – an adaptation of Paul Kelly’s song “How to Make Gravy” – reflects his devotion to Australian stories.

On the eve of the release of his first full-length feature film in 15 years, Oscar-winning animator Adam Elliot muses on a life spent working with wood, glue and clay.

Tristan Clark’s exhaustive but never exhausting thrash through Australia’s punk history rocks – from its first explosion in Brisbane, defying the crushing reign of then premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, through to Sydney’s seething Darlinghurst, where …

If you think Australia’s looking pretty cooked, wait until you get a load of the retro-fascist future Jordan Prosser has fever dreamt for the “lucky” country in Big Time, which reads as if he’s chopped up a bunch of Bret Easton Ellis …

Celebrated French director Olivier Assayas used his experience of pandemic lockdown to create Suspended Time, another in a series of films that directly reflects his own life.

Sam Elkin jumped ship from a “cushy” permanent position with Victoria Legal Aid to become the only lawyer with the state’s inaugural and tenuously funded queer legal service. Then presenting as female, he also decided this was the ideal time to …

Nina Sanadze’s powerful sculptures – now showing in a major survey at NGV Australia – grapple with the brutal histories and emotional contradictions of public monuments.

Comedy writer James Colley’s debut novel, The Next Big Thing, opens with a clipping from the former Fairfax’s Good Weekend supplement, published in 1985. The first of a series of such missives punctuating each chapter, it identifies …

Diana Al-Hadid’s work – on show for NGV Triennial 2023 – layers history and memory in works of paradoxical delicacy.

Director Noora Niasari’s debut feature film Shayda – Australia’s official nomination for the international Oscar – is driven by dark childhood memories.

Twins Danny and Michael Philippou turned down Hollywood so they could make their debut horror feature, Talk to Me, in Adelaide – then Hollywood came knocking.

Agatha Christie does Don’s Party. That’s the vibe of Robert Gott’s deliriously funny Naked Ambition, which spins the all-too-recognisable egomania of today’s political class into a wickedly good farce. Ambitious minister Gregory …

The secret behind Rolf de Heer’s remarkable filmography is pursuing a good life rather than a career.

George Saunders’ Booker Prize-winning Lincoln in the Bardo imagined one of America’s most revered presidents grappling – quite literally – with the body of his beloved son Willie. While tragic, it carved out space for love and delivered …

For Richard E. Grant, acting is a constant joy – but the past year has mostly been about tackling grief.

When it comes to queer history, it’s easy to assume that gaps in the story equate to absence. But it isn’t so. While patriarchal societies have tried their darnedest to erase the presence of the disparate but overlapping LGBTQIA+ communities, we have …

When the first glutinous life form took its faltering steps out of the primordial soup and onto dry land, it popped on a metaphorical timer that counted down to humanity evolving enough to worry about the meaning of it all, who’s responsible and what …

Since his first short film won the Palme d’Or in 2003, Glendyn Ivin has established himself as one of Australia’s most exciting film and television directors. The forthcoming Penguin Bloom, starring Naomi Watts, brings some light to his dark meditations.

Film director and screenwriter Lynne Ramsay frequently turns to books to find engaging stories, as with her adaptation of Jonathan Ames’ novella You Were Never Really Here, but it’s music that truly inspires her. “Sometimes you need to explain that sound is the bigger picture. I’m a frustrated musician at heart, because the mix to me is one of the most exhilarating parts to making a film.”