The Curb

As a young man, Matty Hannon explored the world, sinking roots in the Southeast Asian region. Here, he made lifelong friends, became part of families, and fostered a connection with the land that was ultimately severed when he had to return home to Australia to kick off a 'career'. The towering metal structures that became the home for his monotonous office life played a major role in an emerging mental illness that saw Matty at a ...

Nainita Desai is an award-winning composer whose work has spanned creative formats, from documentaries like The Reason I Jump where she won an Emmy for Outstanding Music Composition, to TV series like Funny Women, to video games like Telling Lies and Immortality. With over 150 credits to her name, Nainita is nothing short of prolific.

In the following interview, Nainita talks about her journey into becoming a composer and how Pe...

Daniel Monks is an award winning theatre and film actor who hails from Perth, Western Australia. He received an AACTA nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the feature film Pulse, a story about a disabled teen who undergoes radical surgery to turn into a beautiful woman in a bid to be loved and embraced. Daniel wrote the script and worked with his close friend, Stevie Cruz-Martin, as a director. It's a film that helped la...

Listeners should note that the following interview contains discussions on childhood sexual abuse and trauma.

Writer-director Carl Joseph Papa's The Missing follows Eric (Carlo Aquino), a young man who lives alone, maintains a crush on his coworker Carlo (Gio Gahol), and has a strong bond with his mother Rosalinda (Dolly De Leon). Rosalinda's request for Eric to check in on his uncle who they haven't heard from in some ...

Carissa Lee is a Noongar actor and writer whose work spans from critical analysis, to theatre, to the new ABC Kids series, Planet Lulin, where she plays Principal Cruz. Carissa's critical work has appeared in publications like Kill Your Darlings, IndigenousX, and Witness Performance, where her writing examined culture and the arts through an Indigenous lens. In her must read piece on Kill Your Darlings, How Acting Saved My Life, sh...

Robert Connolly is one of Australia's great modern directors, having exploded onto the film scene some twenty years ago with The Bank, which was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director at the AFI awards, which he swiftly followed up with an impressive body of work that includes Paper Planes, The Turning, Balibo, Blueback, and the 2021 adaptation of Jane Harper's best seller, The Dry.

That film, which featured Eric Bana as Detec...

For as long as I've been a devotee of cinema, I've followed the career of Patricia Clarkson. Patricia is a genuine queen of the screen, featuring in films like The Station Agent, Far From Heaven, The Green Mile, and Pieces of April, for which she received an Academy Award nomination. Her latest films is the magnificent drama film Monica, featuring Trace Lysette (Transparent, Hustlers) who plays the titular character, a trans woman ...

Jon Bell's unsettling 2021 short film, The Moogai, receives the feature film treatment with his 2024 horror of the same name. Making its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, The Moogai follows in the steps of other Australian horror films (Talk to Me, Relic, You Won't Be Alone) to have left their mark at the fest.

It follows the story of Indigenous couple Sarah (Shari Sebbens) and Fergus (Meyne Wyatt) as they welcome their ...

Australian horror is experiencing something of a renaissance at the moment with the box office boom of Talk to Me, and the critical success of Godless, Monolith, You'll Never Find Me, Birdeater, and so many more. As we leave 2023 in the dust and we head into 2024, we want to start the year by continuing this celebration of ocker horror with the new short film Bad Vibrations, which makes its world premiere at Flickerfest on Saturday...

Aussie indie filmmaker powerhouse Heath Davis is back with his fourth feature film, Christmess. This seasonally appropriate flick follows on fom his grounded work with his solid debut film Broke, in 2016. Heath quickly followed this up with the black comedy Book Week, before swerving into thriller territory with Locusts.

Here we follow washed up alcoholic actor Chris Flint - the never better Steve Le Marquand - who's getting out...

Much of what I do with The Curb is in a bid to shine a light on voices that may not often get the chance to be heard. That mindset carries through with director Marion Pilowsky's tenderly empathetic and joyfully curious documentary Isla's Way. Here we meet Isla Roberts.

Isla isn't a lesbian. She's not a lezzo. She's not a dyke. She's just Isla Roberts.

She lives with her 'friend' Susan and throughout the course of the film we...

When the short story Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian was published in The New Yorker in 2017, it immediately went viral with readers resonating with the way modern day dating can quickly turn toxic. It's a compelling place for director Susanna Fogel to build from with her adaptation of the short story, scripted by Michelle Ashford.

Here, Cat Person follows Emilia Jones' Margot, a ticket person at a cinema in America. She awkward...

Scott Hicks is an Academy Award nominated director, with his Best Picture nominated film Shine bringing his work to international attention, alongside the work of the films subject, pianist David Helfgott.

We're now some twenty-six years removed from the release of Shine, and the echoes of its impact continues to resonate within the creative minds of those who have become vessels for music. In Scott's latest film, The Musical Mi...

Every so often a presence swirls into our lives in an unexpected manner and changes it just a little bit. For many Australians, whether they be wealthy or not-so-wealthy, that presence is David Bromley. Here is a celebrated artist whose work features on the walls of galleries and private art collectors, while the same artwork adorns cologne labels, reusable water bottles, and more. 

As mentioned in Sean McDonald's raucous a...

Madeleine Dyer is a writer, actor, director, and producer, whose body of work includes the 2017 comedy series Sexy Herpes, the acclaimed comedy series Colin from Accounts, where she worked with her sister Harriet Dyer, and now her latest film, A Savage Christmas, out in cinemas on 16 November 2023.

A Savage Christmas tells the story of the Savage family as they meet for a sweaty summer Christmas in Queensland. After years of est...

Radheya Jegatheva is a Perth based filmmaker. His work includes the award winning short Pacing the Pool, about Perth local Richard Pace, and The Quiet, an animated film about an astronaut contemplating existence.

His latest short animated film, Bird Drone, is a collaboration with writer Clare Toonen and producer Hannah Ngo. It tells the story of a seagull who finds an unexpected connection with a human-operated drone. Presented ...

With her delicate and gentle drama Damage, director Madeleine Blackwell has crafted a parable that layers grief, trauma, a sense of location and what it means to live away from home, and more into an emotionally enriching experience. Damage follows Ali, played by Ali Al Jenabi, a refugee in Australia using a friends taxi license to earn some small aspect of a living. As he drives the streets of Adelaide at night, he picks up Esther...

Filmmaker, critic, and cultural historian Bill Mousoulis has forged a career as, in the truest sense of the word, an independent filmmaker in Australia. His filmography spans over decades, with his works showcasing a keen sense of curiosity for the world around him, whether it be Greece, Melbourne, or as in his latest film My Darling in Stirling, the humble city of Stirling in the Adelaide Hills.

In the following interview, reco...