Van Diemen’s Land

Film Synopsis

Van Diemen’s Land
Director: Jonathan Auf Der Heide
Year: 2009
Country: Australia
Duration: 104 minutes
Print source: Madman
Web: www.vandiemensland-themovie.com


The brutal penal colony of  Macquarie Harbour  located in Tasmania was simply known as Hell’s Gates by those convicts unlucky enough to be sentenced to rot there. In the inhumane conditions thousands of miles from home there was no need for fences, the hostile landscape proved to be a boundary more insurmountable than any cage .

This powerfully realized film is based on the true story of eight men’s daring escape into the unknown and utterly alien bush. Hailing from Ireland, Scotland and England the gang of escaped felons are united by their shared desperation, their terror of being captured and their taste for the possibility of freedom, but the thick bush is unforgiving. Lost , desperate and suffering an endless gnawing hunger the men are driven into increasingly horrific actions.

A dramatized telling of the story of Alexander Pearce Van Dieman’s Land  is a period movie with a difference, examining the psychological terrors that lay at the heart of the story with an anthropologist’s unflinching gaze. This is an auspicious debut that heralds a new Australian talent.

Screens with the short film The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce