AUSTRALIAN CYBER-THRILLER LONE WOLF TO BOW AT IFFR

The 2021 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) will host the World Premiere of the new Australian film, Lone Wolf, it was announced overnight. Adapted from Joseph Conrad’s classic book The Secret Agent, writer-director Jonathan Ogilvie re-sets the narrative in a near-future Melbourne, where surveillance of the population has reached dangerously intrusive heights. It will bow in the ‘Big Screen Competition’ strand of IFFR, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Starring Hugo Weaving, the thriller is Ogilvie’s first feature since 2008’s The Tender Hook. It arrives after an extensive pre-production period during which the technical aspects of the setting and the innovative approach to contemporary storytelling were streamlined. The production has coined the term ‘cineveillant’ to describe the aesthetic of the film, one steeped in the grammar of surveillance and the societal and psychological implications of being watched.

The IFFR website describes the film as “an exciting political thriller and an emotion-laden drama”. Weaving (pictured, below) plays the Minister of Justice, whose days are spent scouring footage from hidden cameras, phone taps, Skype sessions and security surveillance. His latest focus is an obscure bookstore where a group of environmental activists are meeting in secret. Idealistic Winnie (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) and her boyfriend Conrad (Josh McConville) want to disrupt the G20, but aren’t aware that they are possibly being lured into a trap.

Ogilvie and co-producers Lee Hubber, Adam White and Matt Govoni are taking the anti-establishment message of the film seriously, extending their counter-surveillance stance into the online marketing of the film. Visitors to the official website can click on a world map and identify covert CCTV locations, registering their stand against the digital tracking of society.   

Lone Wolf was produced with the assistance of Screen Australia and the MIFF Premiere Fund, indicating it will likely have its Australian Premiere at the 2021 Melbourne International Film Festival. It is being distributed by Label Distribution in Australia and LevelK Distribution for the rest of the world.

The 2021 IFFR will adopt a two-tiered structure, with the first of its screenings running February 1-7 followed by a second season from June 2-6.