The Drover’s Wife leads MIFF’s opening night, plus a brand new trailer

Leah Purcell's reimagining of the Henry Lawson classic will show on MIFF's opening night. The subversive film is the culmination of years of reflection and artistry.

A new trailer for subversive frontier drama The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson has just released. The trailer release coincides with MIFF’s announcement that the Indigenous-led film will open MIFF’s 69th festival on 5 August, providing audiences with their first look at one of the most anticipated Australian films of the year. 

Due to premiere in Australian cinemas on 14 October, the film is a taut, postcolonial retelling of the classic Henry Lawson tale The Drover’s Wife as envisioned by Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri writer-director Leah Purcell, who also stars in the film as Molly Johnson herself. Purcell is best known for her roles in Wentworth and Lantana, but the new trailer is testament to a work that this work is entirely her own, the culmination of years of reflection, artistry and labour. 

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Jini Maxwell is a writer and curator who lives in Naarm. They are an assistant curator at ACMI, where they also host the Women & Non-binary gamers club. They write about videogames and the people who make them. You can find them on Twitter @astroblob