Kate Woods: quick links
Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) is marking the 25-year anniversary of Looking for Alibrandi with a 4K restoration, set for wider release in September. In Melbourne for MIFF, director Kate Woods will appear alongside author Melina Marchetta and star Pia Miranda as festival guests. Wood’s latest feature Kangaroo will open in cinemas in September.
Kate Woods & Alibrandi: ahead of the curve
Looking for Alibrandi (2000) was a trailblazing Australian film from several perspectives.
It is a coming-of-age story from a rare female viewpoint. Josie, the central character (played by Pia Miranda), struggles with how being female, Italian, and working-class impact her daily life. But she proudly asserts that she is ‘going to be the first Alibrandi having a say in how her life turns out’.
She has envisaged her own future and plans to go to university to study law. But before this, she has to sort out her insecurities about her place in the world, and her identity as being caught between two cultures, and coming to a place of self-acceptance.
Watch the Looking for Alibrandi trailer.
The film brims with female experience, from comic warnings about boys in panel vans, which Josie has clearly heard, to the resilience of her mother and grandmother, a testament to women’s endurance across generations. Its humour sets it apart from other Australian films about second-generation migrant angst.
Woods herself was one of the earliest women to work as a director at the ABC, steering many of our iconic programs like Simone de Beauvoir’s Babies (1997) and Something in the Air (2000). She is one of the few Australians, male or female, to have a prolific television career in the US. She has directed more than 70 shows or films in Australia and internationally, including The Lincoln Lawyer (2023), Law and Order (2023), The Umbrella Academy, Underground, Bosch: Legacy (2022), and Messiah (2020). This track record no doubt this led to the commission to come back to Australia to direct Kangaroo.
Kangaroo: Kate Woods and Melina Marchetta
Kangaroo reunites Woods with Melina Marchetta, who undertook some additional writing on Harry Cripps’ screenplay, and has second unit direction from Warwick Thornton whom Woods says has created some remarkable vistas of the Australian outback, contributing what she describes as a ‘romantic sensibility’ through beautiful colour and ‘emotional shots’.
Kangaroo stars Ryan Corr (Chris Masterman), Deborah Mailman (Rosie) and Lily Whiteley (Charlie) in her feature film debut. It is produced by Australian-based Bunya Productions and Brindle Films in partnership with StudioCanal Australia. Like Looking for Alibrandi it is a comedy and an iconically Australian film.
Woods is Australian, but an ex-pat since 2006 when according to Woods, Anthony LaPaglia (one of the stars of Looking for Alibrandi), secured her directing roles on Without a Trace. She did not return to Australia until Kangaroo.
From this perspective, she can bring an outsider’s view, much as those foreign directors who brought visions of Australia in films like Wake in Fright (Ted Kotcheff, 1971) and Walkabout (Nicholas Roeg, 1971); however the vision of this film is warm, comic and human.
As the director, she tells the story through the characters, and she is focused on ‘where their heart lies’ as a central approach of her directorial style. She says she ‘creates drama’ through this approach rather than, putting it ‘into a landscape’.
Kangaroo is loosely based on Chris ‘Brolga’ Barns and his wife Tahnee, who founded a Kangaroo Sanctuary in Alice Springs/Mparntwe in 2005. They starred in the 2013 BBC UK/National Geographic documentary series Kangaroo Dundee.
Kangaroo is a family drama in which a once-famous television personality, Chris Masterman, finds himself stranded in outback. Masterman’s job has been cancelled, and he comes to town on his way across the country to another job.
Woods says he is ‘selfish, clueless and lives in a bubble of his own self-importance’. He meets 12-year-old Charlie and these unlikely friends collaborate to rehabilitate orphaned joeys, forging a meaningful and life changing bond.
Kate Woods: family, healing and identity
On the surface, these films appear quite different, but both signify Australian cultural authenticity and have universal themes. Both are dramas with funny bits, and both have stars making their debut in a feature (Pia Miranda and Lily Whiteley). Woods says they are both ‘about family, home and belonging’ and ‘having faith in yourself’, which is an oft told story for Australians.
Woods describes both films as about identity, as closely linked, saying Kangaroo is a story of community, about two people who are lost. The little Aboriginal girl’s father has died, and she is feeling adrift when she meets Masterman; he is equally lost, although he does not know it. Woods says it is a story where ‘two people find their home together and discover who they truly are’, which turns out to be people who are connected to nature, animals and community.
Woods say you couldn’t get anything more Australian, and she hopes it comes across as a celebration that will make us proud of what is unique in the country.
Looking for Alibrandi is showing at ACMI, Melbourne, as part of MIFF, on 20 August 2025. Kangaroo, directed by Kate Woods, is in Australian cinemas from 18 September 2025.
Lisa French is a professor in screen and media and the dean of RMIT’s School of Media and Communication. She interviewed director Kate Woods for this piece on 11 August 2025.
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