Australia has a long and storied cinematic heritage. We made the first feature film with 1906’s The Story of the Kelly Gang, and ever since we’ve been kicking filmic goals. Netflix has a crop of essential films by bold and visionary Australian filmmakers; here are 25 of the best.
Animal Kingdom (2010)
Watch on NetflixOne of the most influential Australian films of the past decade—and the movie that earned Jacki Weaver an Oscar nomination—Animal Kingdom interrogates the anxious dynamics of Melbourne’s criminal underworld. Also starring Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton and Guy Pearce, David Michod’s debut feature follows the machinations of the Cody family after teenager J (James Frecheville) is taken in by his crime matriarch grandmother.
Beneath Clouds (2002)
Watch on NetflixIvan Sen’s first feature film is an intimate drama set against epic landscapes as two teens, Danielle Hall’s mixed-heritage runaway and Damian Pitt’s prison escapee, meet while on the lam. She wants to track down her absentee white father, he wants to see his dying Indigenous mother, and their journey to Sydney is as much an emotional odyssey as a physical one. Brilliant, empathic and strangely underappreciated.
Breaker Morant (1980)
Watch on NetflixThe greatest Australian war film of all time sees Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown and Lewis Fitz-Gerald as three Australian soldiers tried for war crimes during the Second Boer War. Jack Thompson is the inexperienced solicitor tasked with defending them, and a whole range of Australian character actors, not the least of which is Charles “Bud” Tingwell, are the various British and Australian officers who would see them decently shot in order to preserve the Empire. Bruce Beresford’s film is a masterful indictment of the evils of imperialism, and still packs a wallop today.
Cargo (2018)
Watch on NetflixIt’s tough enough protecting a baby during a zombie apocalypse. It’s even tougher protecting a baby, and a young Indigenous girl, and knowing you’ve been bitten and need to find a safe harbour for your charges before you try to eat them. But that’s the challenge facing Martin Freeman’s everyman in this homegrown horror. Expanding their 2013 short of the same name, writer/director team Ben Howling and Yolande Ramke bring nuance and emotional resonance to a genre that was all but played out.
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978)
Watch on NetflixAfter years of systematic abuse by white authorities, mixed heritage Jimmie Blacksmith (Tom E. Lewis) embarks on a bloody rampage, cutting a swathe through turn of the century New South Wales. Fred Schepisi’s adaptation of Thomas Keneally’s 1972 novel is brutal and uncompromising, making us complicit in atrocity while also demanding we understand the injustices that birthed it. Jack Thompson, Bryan Brown, John Jarratt, Ray Meagher, and Ruth Cracknell show up in supporting roles, but it’s the late Tom E. Lewis’s mesmerising turn in the title role that makes this an unmissable classic.
The Dish (2000)
Watch on NetflixFollowing on from the wildly acclaimed The Castle, the Working Dog team brought us this fictionalised but affectionate account of the role New South Wales’ Parkes Observatory played in relaying telemetry and video transmissions from the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon Mission to the waiting world. In other hands this could have been a Very Serious Drama; here it’s a culture clash comedy, as the Australian boffins at Parkes (including Sam Neill, Tom Long, Kevin Harrington and Roy Billing) try to accommodate visiting NASA official Patrick Warburton. Worth it for the cricket scene alone.
The Dry (2020)
Watch on NetflixRobert Connolly adapts Jane Harper’s bestselling novel, sending Eric Bana’s federal cop back to his hometown to investigate a murder-suicide involving a childhood friend. But this is a town where everyone has secrets, and the sins of the past loom large over the present tragedy. An incredible sense of place and a top notch supporting cast elevate this instant classic outback noir.
The Furnace (2020)
Watch on NetflixIn the Western Australian goldfields of the 19th century, Afghan cameleer Hanif (Ahmed Malek) teams up with criminal Mal (David Wenham) to get a stash of stolen gold to a secret furnace where it can be melted down into untraceable ingots. On their trail are the local cop Sergeant Shaw (Jay Ryan), and Mal’s terrifying former partner, Yates (Goran D. Kleut). Director Roderick McKay’s meat pie Western delves into a forgotten corner of Australian history and finds gold.
Goldstone (2016)
Watch on NetflixIvan Sen’s follow up to Mystery Road sees Indigenous detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen) once again investigating dark doings in the outback, this time centered on a human trafficking operation in a remote gold mining settlement. Either helping, hindering or straight up shooting at him are a roster of great Australian actors, including David Gulpilil, Tom E. Lewis, David Wenham and Jacki Weaver. A searing outback noir, Goldstone cemented Swan as the most fascinating character in modern Australian crime fiction, and Sen as one of our most vital directors.
Gurrumul (2018)
Watch on NetflixA moving and insightful documentary about the life, art, and struggles of Dr G. Yunupingu, the acclaimed Yolngu multi-instrumentalist who rose to international fame before sadly passing away in 2017 at the age of 46. Director Paul Damien Williams grants us an impressively intimate view of Gurrumul’s word, offering a portrait not only of an incredible artist, but of Indigenous life in contemporary Australia.
I Am Mother (2019)
What to watchAfter the apocalypse, a young woman (Clara Rugaard) is raised in a sealed bunker by a robot called Mother (voiced by Rose Byrne). Her education is interrupted when she comes across a wounded older woman (Hilary Swank) whose stories of other survivors bring into question everything she has been led to believe. Grant Sputore’s minimalist sci-fi is more drama than thriller, throwing ethical questions at both its characters and the audience while at the same time methodically peeling back layers of mystery regarding the fate of the human race.
Last Cab to Darwin (2015)
Watch on NetflixMichael Caton gives a career best performance as Rex, a terminally ill taxi driver who undertakes an epic cross-country journey to the Northern Territory, where euthanasia is legal. Adapting their own play, Jeremy Sims and co-writer Reg Cribb give us a life-affirming story about death, featuring excellent supporting turns from Ningali Lawford, Mark Coles Smith, and Jacki Weaver.
The Last Wave (1977)
Watch on NetflixThe recently retired Peter Weir brings us this culture clash drama in which Richard Chamberlain’s Sydney lawyer defending four Indigenous men charged with murder—including David Gulpilil. Haunted by strange dreams, he comes to suspect that the killing was a traditional, not to mention mystical, execution. It’s not quite folk horror, but The Last Wave’s sense of impending doom will stay with you.
Looking for Alibrandi (2000)
Watch on NetflixPia Miranda is Josie Alibrandi, a working-class Italian-Australian teen struggling with her sense of identity in this adaptation of Melina Marchetta’s novel by director Kate Woods. Contending with first love and class clashes at her Eastern suburbs private school is tough enough, but when her long-absent father (Anthony LaPaglia) comes into her life, all her various crises come to a head. A superb teen drama.
Mad Bastards (2011)
Watch on NetflixYears after he abandoned his family, rough nut TJ (Dean Daley-Jones) returns to his far north hometown to try and reconcile with his teenage son, Bullet (Lucas Yeeda), who is beginning down the same path of petty crime and substance abuse as his father. Local cop Texas (Greg Tait) runs a support group for reformed “mad bastards”, but knows that the pressures of poverty, boredom and lack of opportunity may well doom Bullet to crime and imprisonment, just like his father. Writer and director Brendan Fletcher’s first—and to date only—feature film is an unsentimental but deeply moving look at Indigenous masculinity in crisis.
Malcolm (1986)
Watch on NetflixColin Friels is Malcolm, a socially awkward backyard inventor who falls in with a pair of petty criminals—Frank (John Hargreaves) and Judith (Lindy Davies)—and decides to use his technical acumen to help them commit robberies. What unfolds is one of the most winning Australian comedies of the 80s, as the little gang use a series of bizarre gadgets and gizmos—notably a miniature tram and a getaway car that splits in two—in the course of their capers. The first film from director Nadia Tass, and arguably her best.
The Man from Snowy River (1982)
Watch on NetflixDirector George Miller (not that one) brings Banjo Paterson’s bush ballad to the screen, in the process mythologising the Australian colonial period. Tom Burlinson is the stripling horseman who attains manhood by romancing Sigrid Thornton, standing up to Kirk Douglas’s land baron and, of course, bringing in the Colt from Old Regret. Simply Australia’s greatest historical romance, bar none.
Measure for Measure (2020)
Watch on NetflixDirector Paul Ireland and the late Damian Hill, who gave us the excellent Pawno, relocate the Shakespeare play of the same name to a Melbourne housing commission tower presided over by Hugo Weaving’s ruminative crime boss—trading the original’s comedy for grit and pathos. When a cross-cultural romance brews between young Muslim woman, Jaiwara (Megan Hajjar) and musician Claudio (Harrison Gilbertson), her brother Farouk (Fayssal Bazzi) swears to put an end to it, putting the fragile peace of the neighbourhood in jeopardy.
Mountain (2017)
Watch on NetflixHaving made Sherpa, Jennifer Peedom’s next documentary goes from the specific to the universal. Willem Dafoe narrates this exercise in slow cinema as we are asked to ruminate on humanity’s relationship with mountains, aided by some truly stunning landscape cinematography. Non-narrative and meditative, this visual essay is as intriguing as it is soothing.
The Nightingale (2018)
Watch on NetflixWriter and director Jennifer Kent followed up The Babadook with this punishing look at the horrors of colonialism. After her husband and child are murdered and she is raped, an Irish convict (Aisling Franciosi) teams up with and Indigenous tracker (Baykali Ganambarr) to seek revenge on the British troops responsible (Sam Claflin, Damon Herriman, Harry Greenwood). What follows is a hellish journey across Tasmania during the genocide of the Indigenous population. Kent refuses to look away from the film’s numerous atrocities, forcing the audience to take stock of our complicity in the crimes of our country’s founding.
Rabbit Proof Fence (2002)
Watch on NetflixBased on a true story, this superb drama from director Philip Noyce follows three young Indigenous girls (Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, and Laura Monaghan) as they follow the titular fence across the length of Western Australia to reunite with their families after being stolen as part of the government’s child removal policy. David Gulpilil, Jason Clarke, and Kenneth Branagh co-star in this moving story of the Stolen Generations.
Rogue (2007)
Watch on NetflixWolf Creek director Greg McLean followed up his debut with this creature feature that sees a giant crocodile munch on a mixed bag of locals and tourists in Australia’s far north. Sam Worthington, Radha Mitchell, John Jarratt, Stephen Curry, and Barry Otto are among those lining up to be lunch for the beast in this solid little shocker.
The Rover (2014)
Watch on NetflixDavid Michôd’s answer to Mad Max sees Guy Pearce on a quest to reclaim his stolen car in the lawless near future outback, teaming up with Robert Pattinson’s simple-minded criminal to do so. A bleak and pitiless odyssey into a wasteland both physical and existential, this would make a good double feature with fellow Aussie John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, assuming you have the appropriate emotional support in place for after.
The Stranger (2022)
Watch on NetflixA none-more-grim psychological thriller based on true events that sees Sean Harris’ itinerant criminal fall in with Joel Edgerton’s fellow outlaw, who begins grooming him for a position in the underworld organisation he represents. But Edgerton’s crim is actually an undercover cop, and Harris’ character is suspected of a brutal child murder. Director Thomas M. Wright steeps us in grimy atmosphere and ratchets the tension to a nigh-unbearable degree in this relentless drama.
Sweet Country (2017)
Watch on NetflixWarwick Thornton’s gut-punch of a western is more tragedy than action movie, following the events that unfold after an Indigenous man, Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris) is forced to shoot a white settler (Ewen Leslie) in self-defence. Fleeing into the bush with his wife, Lizzie (Natassia Gorey-Furber), he is pursued by local cop Fletcher (Bryan Brown) and a posse that includes the god-fearing Fred Smith (Sam Neill). Sweet Country is an unblinking look at the brutal realities of colonialism.
Toomelah (2011)
Watch on NetflixSet in the titular rural New South Wales town, Ivan Sen’s second feature draws on his own youthful experiences, as a troubled ten-year-old (Daniel Connors) falls into the orbit of a local drug dealer (Christopher Edwards) just as a turf war is brewing with a recently paroled rival. An observational drama rather than a crime thriller, Toomelah’s cast of non-professional actors give it a palpable sense of authenticity.
This guide is regularly updated to reflect changes in Netflix’s catalogue. For a list of capsule reviews that have been removed from this page because they are no longer available on the platform, visit here.
