Leah Purcell in 'The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson' (2021) alt
Leah Purcell in 'The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson' (2021) alt
Free
The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson (2021) Roadshow Films

ACMI presents

The Drover's Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson

Featuring a Q&A with Leah Purcell

Leah Purcell | Australia | 2021 | MA15+
Film

This event has ended and tickets are no longer available.

When

Tue 5 Apr 2022

Join us in-person for an exclusive preview of Leah Purcell's new film, for members of the First Nations Film Club.

1893. Australian Alpine Country of the Snowy Mountains. On an isolated property, heavily pregnant Molly Johnson has a secret she must keep buried. While her drover husband is away, she and her children struggle to survive. Molly is confronted by a fugitive Aboriginal man, Yadaka. She finds herself in a desperate situation and takes the black man’s offer of help, her life depends on it.

Unbeknown to Molly, there has been a brutal murder of a woman and her children and Yadaka has been blamed for it. He is a wanted man who will bring undesired attention to Molly Johnson. New town up-holder of law, Nate Clintoff, learns Molly’s drover husband is missing and he sends a trooper out to her property to investigate, triggering a chain of ruinous events.

The Drover’s Wife the Legend of Molly Johnson is a reimagining of Leah Purcell’s acclaimed play and Henry Lawson’s classic short story. A searing Australian Western with love, family, protection, survival, truth and racism at its heart, it asks: how far do you go to protect the ones you love?

Join us afterwards for a Q&A with Leah Purcell on Zoom.

Format: DCP
Language: English
Courtesy: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 109 minutes

Event duration

108 mins

Rating

MA15+

Strong violence

Where

Cinema 2, Level 2
ACMI, Fed Square

How to get there

Join the club

You will need to be a member of the First Nations Film Club to attend this session. By becoming a member of the Club, you'll also get a range of ACMI member benefits.

Join

First Nations Film Club

Watch films from ACMI's collection and beyond, looking back on the trailblazing storytellers and seminal works that have paved the way for First Peoples stories on screen.

Learn more about the Club
 Basically Black

Blak women flipping the script

The Story of the Moving Image Online

Just as our predecessors picked up the pen for letter writing, Aboriginal women in the last 50 years have told their stories through film and television.

Explore the story of Blak Women on Screen
Kate ten Buuren, Curator, ACMI

The cast of the original stage show of Radiance - Rachael Maza, Lydia Miller & Rhoda Roberts, photographed in 1993 - Image via httpelissablake.blogspot.com

Explore more First Nations stories at ACMI

Check out our other screen culture clubs