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The Babadook and Talk to Me producers Causeway Films have birthed a new Australian horror film, The Moogai.

Dreams turn to nightmares when it hits theaters and Digital May 9 via Samuel Goldwyn Films. Watch the trailer below.

Sarah and Fergus, a hopeful young Aboriginal couple, give birth to their second baby. But what should be a joyous time of their lives becomes sinister when Sarah starts seeing a malevolent spirit she is convinced is trying to take her baby.

Fergus, who can’t see it but desperately wants to believe her, grows increasingly worried as she becomes more unbalanced. Is the child-stealing spirit real or is she in fact the biggest threat to the safety of their family?

Writer-director Jon Bell makes his feature debut on the film, based on his 2020 short of the same name.

Shari Sebbens, Meyne Wyatt, Tessa Rose, Clarence Ryan, Toby Leonard Moore, and Bella Heathcote star.

"You can't let the Moogai in..." Samuel Goldwyn Films has unveiled the official trailer for the indie horror film from Australia titled The Moogai, which originally premiered in the Midnight section during the 2024 Sundance Film Festival last year. It's opening on VOD starting in May this summer if anyone is curious to check out this unique supernatural horror story about an Aboriginal demon spirit. The horror is a feature adaptation of Oz filmmaker Jon Bell's own short film of the same name. A young Aboriginal couple brings home their second baby. What should be a joyous time takes a sinister turn at home, as the baby's mother starts seeing a malevolent spirit she is convinced is trying to take her baby. But no one believes her. Starring Shari Sebbens, Meyne Wyatt, Tessa Rose, Clarence Ryan, with Toby Leonard Moore and Bella Heathcote. This received mixed reviews at the festivals...

Over a year after the film premiered at Sundance, Deadline reports this week that horror movie The Moogai has been picked up for U.S. distribution by Samuel Goldwyn Films.

“A May theatrical release is in the works,” Deadline notes.

In The Moogai…

“Sarah and Fergus, a hopeful young Aboriginal couple, give birth to their second baby. But what should be a joyous time of their lives becomes sinister when Sarah starts seeing a malevolent spirit, she is convinced is trying to take her baby. Fergus, who can’t see it but desperately wants to believe her, grows increasingly worried as she becomes more unbalanced. Is the child-stealing spirit real or is she in fact the biggest threat to the safety of their family?”

Shari Sebbens, Meyne Wyatt, Tessa Rose, Bella Heathcote and Toby Leonard Moore star in The Moogai, which marks the feature debut of Indigenous filmmaker Jon Bell.

Exclusive: Samuel Goldwyn Films has taken North American to the Sundance Film Festival 2024 premiere, The Moogai from Bankside Films. A May theatrical release is in the works.

The Australian horror movie comes from Causeway Films which produced such genre hits as The Babadook and Talk to Me.

In the movie, Sarah and Fergus, a hopeful young Aboriginal couple, give birth to their second baby. But what should be a joyous time of their lives becomes sinister when Sarah starts seeing a malevolent spirit, she is convinced is trying to take her baby. Fergus, who can’t see it but desperately wants to believe her, grows increasingly worried as she becomes more unbalanced. Is the child-stealing spirit real or is she in fact the biggest threat to the safety of their family?

Written and directed by Jon Bell, The Moogai stars Shari Sebbens, Meyne Wyatt, Tessa Rose, Bella Heathcote and Toby Leonard Moore.

Jon Bell’s bold and daring film about a mother who is stalked by a child-stealing bogeyman is a little underdeveloped

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Horror movies directed by Indigenous Australians are a largely rare category of cinema, immediately making Jon Bell’s Stolen Generations-themed spook-fest The Moogai a work of cultural significance. Even if the film – while unquestionably bold and daring – feels a little underdeveloped. Bell, The Moogai’s writer and director, expanding a short film of the same name from 2020, deploys creepy images that feel broadly familiar; it is steeped in familiar codes and conventions, while belonging to a very different political and ideological context to the standard genre fare.

Bell’s narrative centers around a heavily-pregnant Aboriginal lawyer Sarah (Shari Sebbens), who’s married to a carpenter, Fergus (Meyne Wyatt), with whom she has a six-year-old daughter, Chloe (Jahdeana Mary). Sarah has an uneasy relationship with her biological mother,...

Jon Bell’s psychological horror The Moogai has scooped the CinefestOZ Film Prize Award of $66,500 – Australia’s most lucrative prize for a local production.

The award was given on Saturday (September 7) at the 17th CinefestOZ Film Festival in Busselton, Western Australia and accepted by co-producer Alex White and actor Meyne Wyatt.

The Moogai marks the feature debut of Indigenous writer/director Bell and follows a young woman, played by Shari Sebbens, who believes an evil spirit is intent on taking her children. It explores the subjects of post-natal depression, transgenerational trauma and indigenous children taken from their parents – known as the stolen generation.

Scaring Up A Big Win

Jon Bell’s “The Moogai” was Saturday named winner of the Film Prize at Western Australia’s CinefestOZ festival. With a cash award of A$100,000, it is one of the richest film festival prizes in the world.

Sarah and Fergus, a hopeful young Aboriginal couple, give birth to their second baby. But what should be a joyous time of their lives becomes sinister when Sarah starts seeing a malevolent spirit that she is convinced is trying to take her baby. Fergus, can’t see it but desperately wants to believe her. He does not know if the child-stealing spirit real or is Sarah is in fact the biggest threat to the safety of their family. The film stars Shari Sebbens and Meyne Wyatt.

It is produced by Kristina Ceyton, Mitchell Stanely and Samantha Jennings and coproduced by Alex White. International sales are handled by the U.

The world premiere of Liu Juan’s A River Without Tears is set to open this year’s Pingyao International Film Festival, which has revealed its full line-up.

The eighth edition of the festival, founded by acclaimed director Jia Zhangke, is scheduled to run from September 24-30 in the picturesque city of Pingyao, in China’s Shanxi province.

Sections include Crouching Tigers, made up of emerging international filmmakers; Hidden Dragons, featuring the first or second films of Chinese directors; gala films by renowned directors; and Made-in-Shanxi, comprising titles by local filmmakers or films shot in in the province.

Opening film...

Filmfare Fame At Last

2022 global hit film, “Rrr” won the award for the best film in the Telugu language at the delayed Filmfare South awards. For their performances in “Rrr,” N.T.R. Jr and Ram Charan were named as winners in the best leading actor category and S.S. Rajamouli won best director.

In the Tamil category, “Ponniyin Selvan Part 1” took the best film award. Its director Mani Ratnam bagged the best director award. Kamal Haasan and Sai Pallavi were honored with the best actor (male) and best actor (female) for their performances in “Vikram” and “Gargi,” respectively.

The winner of the best film award in the Malayalam category was “Nna Thaan Case Kodu,” with its helmer Ratheesh Balakrishnan Poduval collecting the best director prize.

For Kannada cinema, Kiranraj K. was awarded the best director award for “777 Charlie,” while “Kantara” was named the best film.

The awards were instituted for Hindi-language...

Grand Canal

France’s Canal+ Group has increased its stake in multi-territory Asian video streamer Viu to 36.8%. It says that the move is in accordance with the terms of the strategic partnership with Viu owner Pccw Group announced a year ago and follows the satisfaction of key business milestones.

The move is the second time that Canal+ has increased its share stake and means that Canal+ has released the last instalment of its $300 million staggered investment. “This investment is a renewed testimony to Canal+’s commitment to develop Asia as one of the group’s growth engines and underlines Canal+’s confidence in Viu and its team,” the French company said in a statement. A further investment, at Canal+’s discretion, could lift its ownership stake in Viu to 51%.

Sydneysiders Speak

Days after the completion of the festival, “The Moogai” was revealed as the winner of the audience award for...

The 5-16 June program includes Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest Kinds of Kindness, and a hairy family in Sasquatch Sunset

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This year’s Sydney film festival program has just been announced and, as usual, it is bulging with treats from around the world. The event kicks off on 5 June with a screening of Paul Clarke’s documentary Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line, and runs until 16 June at various venues across the city.

Here are 10 films you might want to check out – in addition to three others on the program that I’ve written about previously: The Moogai, Every Little Thing and Mozart’s Sister.

Sydney Film Festival (June 5-16) has unveiled the 12 titles that will play in competition at its 71st edition, including six features that are set to premiere at Cannes this month.

Fresh from playing in Competition at Cannes will be Kinds of Kindness, starring Emma Stone and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, who won the Sydney Film Prize in 2012 with Alps. Further Palme d’Or contenders selected for Sydney include Grand Tour from Portugal’s Miguel Gomes, whose Arabian Nights won the Sydney Film Prize in 2015; Christophe Honoré’s French-Italian comedy Marcello Mio; and Payal Kapadia’s Indian romantic drama All We Imagine As Light.

A24 is reuniting with Talk To Me co-directors Danny and Michael Philippou on the horror title Bring Her Back to star Sally Hawkins.

Plot details remain under wraps on the project, which is being produced by Causeway Films’ Samantha Jennings and Kristina Ceyton. The compnay’s credits include The Babadook, The Nightingale, and this year’s Sundance selection The Moogai.

Production is scheduled to commence this summer and at time of writing it was unclear whether A24 will introduce Bring Her Back to international buyers in Cannes.

Hawkins earned a lead actress Oscar nomination for The Weight Of Water in...

An Aboriginal demon steps in for the real-life enduring trauma of Australia’s “Stolen Generations” in Jon Bell’s debut feature, The Moogai. Government sponsored assimilation programs ripped tens of thousands of Aboriginal children from their families to be placed with white families in Australia in the first half of the 20th century, leading to widespread decimation of cultural identities among the indigenous population. The Moogai substitutes a child-stealing demon for the government in what could have been a powerful examination of the tragedy and its lingering effects on Aboriginal people, but instead falls flat as it forgoes tension while ultimately spending too much effort saying the quiet part loud. Sarah Bishop (Shari Sebbens) is a successful woman, an attorney on the brink of superstardom with her...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. Today we’re talking to Stephen Kelliher, co-founder and MD of established London-based sales and film finance outfit Bankside Films. The company played a key role in getting Australian horror hit Talk to Me off the ground and Kelliher walks us through how that project came together as well as Bankside’s hefty EFM slate this year.

Stephen Kelliher is in a good mood. The Bankside Films co-founder and managing director is coming off of the back of a banner 12 months with his London-based sales and film finance outfit, a company that not only repped worldwide sales on Irish-language Oscar nominee The Quiet Girl but also played an integral role in getting Aussie breakout supernatural horror hit Talk to Me off the ground.

One year on from its Berlinale Special screening Australian horror Talk To Me has grossed nearly $100m at the global box office and sellers have heeded the call: EFM 2024 is packed with “elevated genre” titles.

Neon snapped up Steven Soderbergh’s Lucy Liu ghost story Presence in Sundance and the international division has kicked off talks in Berlin. Neon International also has Cuckoo, Tilman Singer’s horror that premieres in the Berlinale Special section and stars Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens.

A24 is selling I Saw The TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun’s take on gender dysphoria and teenage isolation...

Stories of Australia’s “Stolen Generations” — Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families by a white government — fuel the central metaphor in “The Moogai,” Jon Bell’s Sundance horror movie based on his 2020 short film. Unfortunately, this well-meaning metaphorical approach defines the strict boundaries of Bell’s feature debut, a brief but languid thriller rife with reminders of meaning that fail to coalesce into something thrilling or moving.

A riveting prologue, set decades in the past, orients the viewer within Australia’s torrid history, as white men in suits attempt to chase down and kidnap Black children on an Aboriginal reserve. Two of these kids, a pair of young sisters, evade this fate of ethnic cleansing and forced assimilation, though one of them ends up taken by a supernatural force hiding in the shadows: the Moogai, a folkloric boogeyman who snatches children with its sickly, talon-like fingers.

The main story,...

Sundance Film Festival ran from January 18-28 and, after a sluggish start, there were deals (click here for the latest), celebrity sightings, and a protest.

Christopher Nolan turned up to collect an honourary award at the festival’s opening night gala fundraiser and called the occasion a “full circle moment” 23 years after premeiring his breakout thriller Memento there back in 2001.

Kristen Stewart also attended the gala and starred in two films this year, while celebrity guests included Robert Downey Jr., Will Ferrell, and Malia Obama, who managed to attend somewhat under the radar with her short film The Heart credited to Malia Ann.

There are many fascinating visions of Australian horror that have made their premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. There is the one everyone knows — The Babadook — just as there are perhaps lesser-known ones, like 2020’s Relic. A year ago, it was the breakout hit Talk to Me. Even though the latter is more than a little flawed, it wasn’t afraid to go for it when it counted. Just as there are more bold visions of horror from the festival, there are also those that come and go without leaving much of an impression. In the same year as Talk to Me, the forgettable Run Rabbit Run that proved not all Australian horror is made equal. While not without some interesting ideas here and there, it ultimately felt more derivative of its predecessors without bringing anything new to the table. This year, The Moogai falls into the latter category of being more superficial than scary.

It seems these days the devil’s designs have strayed from virginal teen girls to kindergarteners. Whether stuffing them in animatronic suits or isolating them in apocalyptic cabins, the worst thing an au courant horror villain can do is harm children. The second-worst sin is to disbelieve a mother. The Moogai, Jon Bell’s feature debut based on his short film of the same name, wears these trends like a badge of honor. But while The Moogai comes by its earnest messaging honestly––the real horrors stem from Australian colonialism––it just feels like a different take on old tropes.

At the center of the action is Sarah (Shari Sebbens), a new mom in the middle of her own Rosemary’s Baby-like conspiracy. Newly pregnant Sarah is trying to cold-shoulder her biological mom, Ruth (Tessa Rose), and the Aboriginal culture she’s eager to share, but her daughter, Chloe (Jahdeana Mary), and husband,...

Over the course of six decades (1910-1970), tens of thousands of Australian Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their homes due to the assimilation policies that were in place at the time. These policies claimed that the lives of First Nations people would be improved if they became part of white society, and an effort to breed out color from the Aboriginal population was carried out. Unsurprisingly, the lives of the removed children were not improved, with studies showing that many of them developed adverse reactions to their removal like mental health issues, drug and alcohol abuse, among others. These children became known as The Stolen Generation, and their experiences left a black mark in Australia’s history.

Writer/director Jon Bell, adapting his award-winning 2021 short film of the same name, taps into this unsavory event with The Moogai, yet another monster-as-a-metaphor horror drama that mostly succeeds when it acts as a drama,...

An exploration of the generational trauma surrounding the “stolen generations” of Aboriginal children by the Australian government, Jon Bell’s feature debut “The Moogai” fits all the criteria of what we would, perhaps pejoratively, describe as “elevated horror.” A fraught term, and one that would need more than the length of this review to dive into, it nevertheless seems apt for a film that so blatantly makes its subtext into text.

Continue reading ‘The Moogai’ Review: Australian Social-Horror Is A Blunt Force Allegory About The Stolen Generations [Sundance] at The Playlist.

Between 1910 and 1970, tens of thousands of mixed-race children of Australian Aboriginal descent were forcibly removed from their parents and communities, becoming wards of the state. That human rights violation carried out in the name of “protection” and assimilation has been the subject of books, documentaries and narrative features, notably Phillip Noyce’s gripping 2002 drama, Rabbit-Proof Fence. Few Indigenous filmmakers have been given the opportunity to explore the unhealable wound of the “Stolen Generations,” which makes Jon Bell’s The Moogai deserving of attention, deftly weaving a legacy of trauma into supernatural horror.

Writer-director Bell expanded the screenplay from his intense 2021 short of the same name, a punchy 14 minutes that make chillingly effective use of sound and mostly unseen terrors to convey a young couple’s escalating fear for their newborn baby and their ultimate helplessness to escape the grasp of a malevolent spirit. A powerful closing image eloquently places the...

This isn’t a meteorology blog. We’re under no obligation to inform you that–despite a historically slow ski season start–the snow now falling across Northern Utah’s Wasatch Valley is voluminous and omnipresent. All the better excuse for sequestering oneself inside the weatherproofed walls of Park City’s myriad Sundance screening venues. And whether you’re a Sundance programmer, filmmaker, critic, industry wonk or civilian attendee, one thing is certain: there are currently a lot of granola bars getting smushed in a lot of people’s pockets.

Of course, our favorite among these snowblind wretches are our own Film Independent Fellows proudly debuting their new works at the festival. And by “Fellows” here we of course mean filmmakers who have been directly supported by Film Independent’s Lab Programs, Project Involve, Fast Track and Fiscal Sponsorship programs, as well as Emerging Filmmaker Award winners and grant recipients.

Growing up in an Indigenous Aboriginal family in Australia, nothing was scarier to horror director Jon Bell than the government. He recalls the “Stolen Generations,” a tragedy that Americans likely know little about.

“The government would take light-skinned kids — or just any kids they could get their hands on — and rehouse them,” he said. “It’s a pretty common tool of colonizers to try and take kids and make them convert to this other culture.”

Bell opens his new movie “The Moogai” — premiering at this year’s Sundance midnight selections — by putting audiences in the middle of one of these traumatic moments, a flashback in which Aboriginal children at play with their mothers are suddenly pursued by heartless men in suits, hoping to snatch them up.

The kids quickly run into another monster: The titular Moogai, a creature hell-bent on stealing children. The word has several meanings for the Aboriginal people,...

TikTok has taken the world by storm — skyrocketing in use amid the pandemic as a source of entertainment and human connection — and now it wants to change the way Hollywood markets movies and TV series. The social video platform is hoping to make inroads at its first Sundance Film Festival — and it’s bringing a dozen people from its creators program to Park City.

Catherine Halaby, the head of entertainment for TikTok in North America, says Sundance creates an opportunity to support established and emerging creators and “uplevel their content and their industry savvy and their exposure.” She adds, “We’re really thinking from a content-first perspective and how we can be an accelerant to those creators in their growth on and off platform.”

Two of those creators spoke with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the trip. Joe Aragon, known on TikTok as Cinema Joe, has more than 1 million followers,...

What was the biggest story at Sundance last year? That’s easy: when “Coda” sold big in 2021 and went on to win Best Picture in 2022. Would that happen in 2023? It didn’t, and what did happen at last year’s festival and what it means for the market in Park City in 2024 is now harder to pin down.

It might be the story of “Fair Play,” which sold to Netflix for $20 million and was the biggest sale in a market that also included aggressive bidding wars for “Flora and Son” (Apple) and “Theater Camp” (Searchlight). It could be the tale of “Talk to Me,” which A24 knew how to market into a $92 million worldwide box office hit when nothing else that premiered at the festival gained nearly the same box office traction. Or it could be that Lily Gladstone is taking time out of the Oscar circuit to hype “Fancy Dance,...

Australia is among the most represented countries outside of the US in the initial line-up for this year's SXSW Film and TV Festival, with Natalie Bailey’s 'Audrey', Jon Bell's 'The Moogai', and Jack Clark and Jim Weir's 'Birdeater' among the films selected.

The post ‘Audrey’, ‘The Moogai’, ‘Birdeater’ in SXSW line-up appeared first on If Magazine.

SXSW Film & TV Festival announced multiple categories for the 2024 event, including Opening Night TV Premiere, Centerpiece Screening and more.

Netflix’s “3 Body Problem,” executive produced and written by “Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, along with “True Blood” writer Alexander Woo is set to debut as the Opening Night TV Premiere. The highly anticipated series, which stars Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Rosalind Chao, Liam Cunningham, Eiza González, Marlo Kelly, Benedict Wong and Jonathan Pryce, is an adaptation of the best-selling novel.

For the Centerpiece Screening, SXSW will debut the feature film adaptation of the 1980s series “The Fall Guy,” directed by “Atomic Blonde” helmer David Leitch, and starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. Gosling portrays a battle-scarred stuntman sent back to work on his a film his ex-wife (Blunt) is directing, when the leading star goes missing. “The Fall Guy” is described as a “big-screen...

The Sundance Film Festival is one of the most highly respected film festivals in the world, and while the horror genre generally doesn’t seem to receive as much respect as it deserves, horror has had a steady presence at Sundance over the years. In fact, just last year the Sundance horror line-up included the likes of Infinity Pool, Talk to Me, My Animal, and Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls. The Sundance 2024 line-up was revealed earlier today (you can see the list Here) – and there again a good number of horror movies included in the program.

Below you can take a closer look at some of the horror movies that will be showing at Sundance 2024, with images to go along with each one of them.

Of course, most of the horror can be found in the Midnight program:

I Saw the TV Glow / U.S.A. — Teenager...

It is the debut feature from Jon Bell.

UK sales outfit Bankside Films has acquired Aboriginal Australian filmmaker Jon Bell’s debut, psychological horror The Moogai. It is produced by Australian outfit Causeway Films and based on a screenplay by Bell.

A young Aboriginal couple brings home their second baby. What should be a joyous time takes a sinister turn, as the baby’s mother starts seeing a malevolent spirit she is convinced is trying to take her baby. The feature explores post-natal depression, transgenerational trauma and Australia’s Stolen Generation (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were removed...