The Last Wave

From director Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock), prophetic thriller The Last Wave follows a Sydney lawyer defending five Aboriginal men in a motiveless murder.

Extreme weather across Australia seems to announce a coming apocalypse: fist-sized hailstones, torrential rain, and frogs falling from the sky. Meanwhile, urban lawyer David is asked to represent a group of Aboriginal men accused of a motiveless murder. Though he is scrupulously rational and logical, David’s dreams predict the future, and it slowly dawns on him that his knowledge is by no means the only truth out there. The Last Wave mixed two of Australia’s great anxieties; nature (see also Lost Weekend), and the trauma of all that was left buried in colonial genocide. Smart, sombre, and prescient cinema.

“Weather is an instrument of terror in this Peter Weir classic, and western rationalism fails in the face of Indigenous spirituality.” – Luke Buckmaster, The Guardian