Writer-director Domini Marshall is a talent on the rise. With short films like Go with Grace, Slap , and now her finest work yet, Howl , under her belt, Marshall is a force to be reckoned with. Her work is deeply personal, written from a perspective that invites audiences to engage with the internal mindset of her characters, and through that process, we're able to see the world differently. Guiding Domini's creative output is producer Josie Baynes, a equally impressive talent on the rise. Along...
Jul 23, 2025•53 min•Season 19Ep. 2
Grant Hardie is the co-founder of Monster Pictures , one of Australia and New Zealand's leading distributors of horror and genre films. In 2011, Monster Pictures birthed the darkly delightful Monster Fest , which has quickly become Australia's flagship horror and genre film festival. Now, in 2025, Monster Pictures , in partnership with Head Gear Films and White Hot Productions, have morphed into their next stage of evolution, launching Monster Pictures Studios , a full-service genre film studio ...
Jul 16, 2025•25 min•Season 19Ep. 1
Eya’s (Safa Gharbaoui) world as a 12-year-old Belgian Tunisian is filled with warmth and humour. She’s considered the welcome extension of her older brother Younès (Mehdi Bouziane) whose friends treat her like a part of their family. She loves viral dance moves, French rap, football, and riding on the back of Younès’ motorcycle. She’s bright and happy, especially when she’s included in Younès circle. When Younès becomes “collateral damage” in a shooting incident, everything Eya thought was her l...
Jul 14, 2025•30 min•Season 18Ep. 18
Debut Australian director Amy Wang’s twisted satire Slanted sees an aspiring prom queen undergo radical surgery to change her race. This is a film that's been called Mean Girls by way of The Substance . Nadine Whitney caught up with Amy Wang to talk about the process of getting her feature film debut off the ground, what it means to be an Australian filmmaker working right now, and the themes of the film, and more. Follow us on Instagram , Facebook , and Bluesky @thecurbau . We are a completely ...
Jul 09, 2025•25 min•Season 18Ep. 17
Dreams, imagination and sobering realities meld in this absolutely magical debut, in which a young girl must decide whether to leave her volcanic island home. The island of Fogo, Cape Verde is singular in its beauty. Drylands give way to black-sand beaches, while villagers gather in intimately cluttered homes. Director Denise Fernandes’ attention to lyrical detail highlights the profound love that young Nana (Dailma Mendes as a child, Sanaya Andrade as a teen) has for her home. But for all its v...
Jul 07, 2025•41 min•Season 18Ep. 16
Abebe Butterfly Song is a documentary that starts as a narrative exploration of Melbourne musician David Bridie, best known for his work in bands like Not Drowning, Waving and My Friend the Chocolate Cake, but then folds in his life-changing experience of travelling to Papua New Guinea and meeting musician George Telek and the Moab Stringband. The film then takes audiences through a journey of discovering Papua New Guinea culture and how Australia's past is intertwined with Papua New Guinea's fu...
Jul 02, 2025•24 min•Season 18Ep. 15
Co-directors Richard Moore and John Doggett Williams invite audiences into the space of pain, discomfort, and body exploration with their searing, curiously tender, and wonderfully life-enriching documentary Stelarc Suspending Disbelief . This occasionally profound experience follows performance artist Stelarc , a Cyprus-born Australian artist who was raised in the suburbs of Melbourne and found a path towards exploring mortality, death, and what it means to be alive through artwork that many mi...
Jul 01, 2025•1 hr 28 min•Season 18Ep. 14
On this episode of physical media reviews, Nadine Whitney & Andrew F Peirce delve into some of the major releases from Umbrella Entertainment. They kick off the discussion looking at Jamie Blanks Ozploitation throw back gorno flick Storm Warning , before taking a darker dive into the mammoth New Extremity Collection which features High Tension , Anatomy of Hell , Frontier(s) , and Martyrs . Finally, they dive into one of the must have physical releases of the year, Tarsem's The Fall . Physic...
Jun 29, 2025•1 hr•Season 18Ep. 13
On this episode of the Curb review podcast, Nadine Whitney takes us deep into the realm of fighting flamethrowers with the oddly titled From the World of John Wick: Ballerina , before whisking us away into the land of dragon fantasy with the live-action spin on How to Train Your Dragon , before she takes Andrew to a remote shark expedition in Queensland with Dangerous Animals . Follow us on Instagram , Facebook , and Bluesky @thecurbau . We are a completely independent and ad free website that l...
Jun 28, 2025•38 min•Season 18Ep. 12
Daniel Bibby's short film Half Past Midnight follows two strangers - Harper (Miah Madden) and Marcus (Mitchell Bourke) - who meet in a cinema and decide to head out for drinks after the screening. In the bar, their relationship is revealed to be something more, something where romance once flourished, a romance that is now withering, yet for both Harper and Marcus, it feels as if it's still in reach. There's a tenderness to Half Past Midnight, one that underpins the films understanding of two ad...
Jun 26, 2025•1 hr 21 min•Season 18Ep. 11
Follow us on Instagram , Facebook , and Bluesky @thecurbau . We are a completely independent and ad free website that lives on the support of listeners and readers just like you. Visit Patreon.com/thecurbau , where you can support our work from as little as $1 a month. If you are unable to financially support us, then please consider sharing this interview with your podcast loving friends. We’d also love it if you could rate and review us on the podcast player of your choice. Every review helps ...
Jun 19, 2025•30 min•Season 18Ep. 10
Harley Hefford and Luke Thomas are two thirtysomething Naarm-Melbourne based creatives who have a background in events, festivals, and bars. Their latest endeavour is an art community spread over ten floors in a new creative space in Collingwood located in the iconic Easey's building, best known for the train carriages that sit on its rooftop. In the following chat, Harley and Luke talk about the foundation of Trainscendence, which kicks off with a two day grand opening experience on Friday 20 J...
Jun 19, 2025•19 min•Season 18Ep. 9
As I tell Gabrielle in the following interview, when a new Gabrielle Brady film emerges into the world, it is like the arrival of a gift, one that pulls us into a mindset of considering the lives of others, including those of the crabs of Christmas Island, or maybe the horses of the Gobi Desert. It's one that encourages us to see the world of truth differently. That notion of truth is something I've asked filmmakers a lot lately, and I'm conscious of its almost accusatory nature, as if documenta...
Jun 11, 2025•51 min•Season 18Ep. 8
Zoe Pepper mines the generational wealth divide for all its worth in the acidic WA-made comedy Birthright . Cory (a perfectly cast deadpan Travis Jeffery) and his very pregnant wife Jasmine (an equally deadpan and delightful Maria Angelico) are getting the shaft from their rental. Stuffed in more ways than one, they load up all they can into the boot of their car and trundle off to the sanctuary of mum and dad, Cory's baby-boomer parents, Richard and Lyn (pitch perfect casting of Michael Hurst a...
Jun 09, 2025•32 min•Season 18Ep. 7
Judith Hancock has always felt that was different from her siblings. Having spent her youth in boarding schools, Judith felt disconnected from her family in more ways than just distance. When she returned home from boarding school, she spent most of her time with children from an orphanage where her father worked. Judith felt other aspects of difference in her family that caused her to wonder whether she was adopted - her siblings were much older than she was, and her mother was not particularly...
Jun 05, 2025•49 min•Season 18Ep. 6
I remember sitting in the Mercury at the Adelaide Film Festival and watching Unspoken and getting to see a rare talent emerge on screen in the form of Kat Dominis. Her lead performance left me moved, shaken, and stunned by the depth of emotions she presented on screen. As the credits rolled, I saw she was the co-writer of this award-winning short film, a credit she shares with Mariana Rudan and director Damian Walshe-Howling. Unspoken is a story about family, it's a story about division, and it'...
Jun 04, 2025•54 min•Season 18Ep. 5
Amalie Atkins loving documentary Agatha's Almanac follows Agatha Bock, Amalie's aunt, as she lives her life on a farm in southern Manitoba, tending to the vegetables, beans, and the soil. She preserves the heirloom seeds she has nurtured and maintained for decades, connecting her to her families past, and tenderly supporting herself using traditional methods. Agatha is also 90 years old, with her connection to the soil being a life-enriching experience. The charm of the film not only comes from ...
Jun 03, 2025•44 min•Season 18Ep. 4
Queensland: Beautiful one day, deadly the next! For American drifter Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) the gorgeous Gold Coast supplies her with great surfing and anonymity where she can leave her dark past behind. For psychopathic fisherman Tucker (Jai Courtney) the ocean provides him with a living, but his real interest lie in dying: the death of those he reels on to his boat to feed the sharks. Sean Byrne’s Dangerous Animals harkens back to Ozsploiation in the best way. It’s brutal, quick paced, and o...
Jun 02, 2025•20 min•Season 18Ep. 3
Director Justin Kurzel has crafted a filmography built on exploring the impact of trauma and violence on a nation. Whether it be his excoriating debut film Snowtown or the acts of cautionary storytelling with Nitram and The Order , Kurzel’s work questions how violence and trauma lingers in our bodies, our minds, and in our lands. That’s a notion that he explores with impressive strength with his first foray into documentary filmmaking, Ellis Park . There’s catharsis in Ellis Park , partially bec...
Jun 02, 2025•33 min•Season 18Ep. 2
There's a delirious level of dark comedy that thrives in the new short film DIY from director Tony Gardiner and writer Lachlan Marks. A woman, played with a disarming ease by Claire Lovering, is mourning the passing of her dog. As she drills into the wall to hang up a picture of her pup, she is surprised to find blood coming out of the hole. Heading to the other side of the wall, she finds the dead body - the first of the dilemmas she encounters. The next is Damon Herriman's organised crime clea...
May 29, 2025•50 min•Season 18Ep. 1
Chad Freidrichs is a documentarian who has crafted a filmography built with a series of fringe stories that unveil fascinating narratives that exist just outside the periphery of normalcy. His first feature doc, Jandek on Corwood , sees a reclusive folk and blues musician gain a following, all the while he never truly engages with his followers fascination with his work. In 2011, Chad crafted the ethnographic documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth , which looks at the urban racism that existed in soci...
May 22, 2025•57 min•Season 17Ep. 22
Part of why Coming & Going feels like a quiet revolution of a film is the manner that Andy presents vulnerability, loneliness, and tenderness on screen. 'Baby, you are gonna miss that plane' is what Julie Delpy said to Ethan Hawke as she danced in the climax of Before Sunset , creating one of cinemas finest romantic moments. Andy pulls from the echo of that scene, creating the pivotal moment within Coming & Going with a scene that has Harry taking a guitar off the wall and playing a song...
May 22, 2025•1 hr 13 min•Season 17Ep. 21
Matthew Rankin is a Canadian filmmaker who hails from Winnipeg, Manitoba. His work, which includes the acclaimed award-winning 2019 feature The Twentieth Century , has often been called 'experimental' or a slice of 'absurdist comedy'. That's partially true, but I'd go a step further and say that there's a touch of humanist storytelling to his work, one that's crafted from a globalist perspective. That mindset is accentuated with Rankin's latest film, the tender and superb Universal Language , a ...
May 21, 2025•29 min•Season 17Ep. 20
Isabella Tree is a noted conservationist and the author of the acclaimed book Wilding , which tells the story of Isabella and her husband as they undertook the immense and impressive journey to rewild their failing four-hundred-year-old estate in England, bringing beavers and cranes back to the country for the first time in years. Wilding , alongside the work of fellow conservationist Derek Gow, author of such books as Birds, Beasts, and Bedlam and Bringing Back the Beaver , have become foundati...
May 20, 2025•26 min•Season 17Ep. 19
Co-writer and actor Archie Lush, director Alex Power, and producer Mark Zanosov take us to the streets of Fremantle, Western Australia, where their short film Blunt pushes us into the simmering heat of the kitchen. Under the spatter of duck fat and the glint of sharp knives is the mounting pressure of being a top tier chef, a notion that's amplified by Archie Lush's emerging culinary creative need to try and save his fathers struggling restaurant. Shot with a vivid realisation from one of Austra...
May 18, 2025•34 min•Season 17Ep. 18
Nadine Whitney had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Karan Kandhari and Radhika Apte about Sister Midnight and how as original and ‘weird’ as it is, it’s also representative of people who are rarely seen as (essential) inhabitants of Mumbai. Both Karan and Radhika are an absolute joy to listen to. Kandhari’s film is a marvel of inventiveness. The work itself breaks the rules of what is considered genre cinema by never settling on one. Sister Midnight is much like the artist who performed t...
May 14, 2025•16 min•Season 17Ep. 17
Genevieve Bailey is a documentarian who has drawn attention to the impact of societal struggles with mental illness through her empathetic and nurturing body of work. With feature films like I Am Eleven and Happy Sad Man, Gen embraces a supportive mindset, using the power of cinema to bring real stories to audiences. It's that sense of support that is keenly felt in her latest documentary, Always Listening, a short film about the history of Lifeline Australia. Gen takes us to the end of the tele...
May 14, 2025•51 min•Season 17Ep. 16
Lorcan Finnegan's wild and weird trip-fest flick The Surfer is one that's had local audiences salivating at the prospect of its arrival. That anticipation went into hyperdrive when Oscar winning actor and walking cult-factory Nicolas Cage was announced as the leading man, a bloke returning home to the South West to buy his family home, reconnect with family, and surf a little. His idea of a Christmas sojourn is scarpered when 'the locals', headed up by Julian McMahon at his career best, thwart h...
May 13, 2025•25 min•Season 17Ep. 15
Jacob Richardson's feature film debut The Aegean sees the Queensland based writer-director embrace the Grecian story of a widower, Hector (Costas Mandylor), who finds himself in the orbit of Khristos (Light), a refugee who finds himself in the waters of the Aegean Sea. As Khristos finds himself becoming embedded in Hector's life, he discovers an unexpected bond that will give him a sense of place and purpose that he was missing. In the above interview, Jacob talks about the personal connection t...
May 12, 2025•48 min•Season 17Ep. 14
With her essential website Infinite-Women.com , Allison Tyra has built a deep database that contains more than 6000 biographies from around the world and throughout history, documenting the biographies of women who have made a mark in history. Her debut book, Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work , expands on the database within Infinite Women and explores the stories of over 600 women who have had their work or achievements be overlooked, misattributed, or stolen, ultim...
May 08, 2025•51 min•Season 17Ep. 13
