Goalpost Pictures
In The Winter Dark
Synopsis
The opening night film of the 1998 Sydney Film Festival, this hypnotic psychological thriller was the debut film of director James Bogle.
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Night after night, Maurice Stubbs (Ray Barrett), an old farmer, keeps vigil on his porch. In the darkness of his heart, all he has is remorse and the broken dreaming of the dead.
This is the riddle that tore his life apart. Maurice and wife Ida (Brenda Blethyn) are disturbed by something skulking in their yard, unsettling the dog. But the unidentified presence nudges a deeper malingering in the lives of the old couple.
A sense of grievance that has festered unspoken and unshared, since the cot death of their baby decades ago, sharpens. Meanwhile Ronnie (Miranda Otto) takes refuge with the other resident of the valley, Jacob (Richard Roxburgh), after a drug trip turns dark.
When her ducks are mysteriously slaughtered, compelled by the same sense of menace, the two strangers fall into an involuntary alliance.
The unseen presence provokes a growing fear in the neighbours that brings rise to deeper discontents in In The Winter Dark, a moving requiem for the unspoken and unresolved mysteries of the heart.