WNDX Feature Documentary: Feet in Water, Head on Fire
Pay What You Can
Join us for our Staff Picks series, where our Winnipeg Film Group staff will select and introduce new and old favourites. This month’s selection was chosen by Executive Director Leslie Supnet.
Dir. Ted Kotcheff
1971, Australia, 109 min
Alongside Mad Max and Walkabout, Wake in Fright is widely acknowledged as one of the seminal films in the development of modern Australian cinema. Directed by Ted Kotcheff (First Blood) and starring Donald Pleasence (Halloween), Wake in Fright tells the nightmarish story of a schoolteacher’s descent into personal demoralization at the hands of drunken, deranged derelicts while stranded in a small town in the Australian Outback. Believed to be lost for decades and virtually unseen in America until now, Wake in Fright returns fully-restored in what the New York Observer says “may be the greatest Australian film ever made.”
Content warning: This film contains graphic documentary footage scenes of animal cruelty.
Generously sponsored by IATSE 856 Manitoba.
“Reaches a level of anxiety-inducing terror that few other films have achieved.” – Trace Thurman, Horror Queers Podcast
“There is queasy undercurrent of sentimental kindness and indulgence beneath the violence.” – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
