Justin Kurzel

Justin Kurzel’s first feature film SNOWTOWN, premiered at Adelaide Film Festival in 2011, winning the Audience Award. The film screened in over 15 international festivals including Toronto in 2011 and International Critics Week in Cannes in 2012 where it was awarded Special Distinction of the President.
In 2014, Justin directed a feature adaptation of MACBETH starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, selected in competition at Cannes Film Festival in 2015. In 2016 he directed the blockbuster adaptation of ASSASSIN'S CREED starring Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons and Charlotte Rampling.
TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG, a feature film based on the novel by Peter Carey and starring George McKay, Russell Crowe and Essie Davis premiered at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival.
Justin is an Executive Producer on the Apple TV/Paramount miniseries SHANTARAM, based on the book by Gregory David, being produced by Anonymous Content.

Director’s Statement

“I have lived in Tasmania for the last four years where my wife and I have decided to bring up our daughters. We have done this because there is no more beautiful place than this land and people. There is a spirit and resilience unlike any other. In winter the storms from the Antarctic batter the coasts and in a strange way Tasmania comes alive with energy, a curiosity, a need to explore, to understand this place and its past.
Its past has ghosts, terrible unresolved tragedies, which haunt and have settled like a constant fog over its exquisite beauty. This reflection is complex and cautious; there are things best not talked about, a darkness to evade. The shadows flicker, but they mostly sit in blackness.
Shaun Grant's script NITRAM came from those shadows. It was unexpected and revealing in its honesty and genuine desire to understand and ask questions about one of the darkest chapters in Australian history, the 1996 Port Arthur shootings. The forensic unpeeling of the character in the weeks leading up to the shootings was as vivid as it was elusive that it reached beyond the monster echoes and confronted me with someone who I felt I had known, walked past, ignored, would see but then forget.
The portrait he invented, the family he created, the street they lived on all felt conversant and familiar. This step-by-step unpeeling of a character, their dismantling and isolation, dared me to consider how someone could evolve into a leviathan. When that person was at their most dangerous and volatile, how were they able to make the worst choices imaginable?
The moment we feel the most unsure and uncertain of NITRAM is the moment that he buys his first guns. The horror of this scene spoke more to me about gun reform than any statistic or opinion piece. It crystallised the tragedy in a way, which made me clearly see the failings of the past, how gun laws could easily be exploited by the most vulnerable and dangerous.
Since my first film SNOWTOWN I have been interested in why these young men search for answers in such extreme violence. Is there a cultural void, which starves these human beings of a tribe, an absence of belonging? When there is no church, no sense of origin, no connection to land and country, what becomes their compass, what corrupts them towards this apathetic and senseless need to destroy life?
As filmmakers, we have tried to tread gently. I am conscious that this film is speaking to an event in time, which we would rather look past. The profound pain runs deep. Forgetting helps us survive but freedom comes from memory. I have sought to reach into the darkness to find a truth and to understand the unimaginable. There are no answers but the legacy of Port Arthur is our albatross around our necks, it is part of our history and it warns the future of its perils.”