‘The New Boy’: First Look At Cate Blanchett In Cannes Religious Drama From Warwick Thornton

Here’s your first look at Cate Blanchett in The New Boy, the latest film from Australian filmmaker Warwick Thornton.

The pic will debut in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, which will be Thornton’s second appearance at the fest, following 2009’s Samson & Delilah, for which he won the Caméra d’Or Award for first-time directors.

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Set in 1940s Australia, The New Boy is the story of a nine-year-old Aboriginal orphan boy (Reid) who arrives in the dead of night at a remote monastery, run by a renegade nun (Blanchett), where his presence disturbs the delicately balanced world in this story of spiritual struggle and the cost of survival.

Cate Blanchett’s Dirty Films and Scarlett Pictures partnered to co-produce, with Roadshow Films distributing for Australia and New Zealand, CAA Media Finance and UTA handling sales for North America, and The Veterans on board to manage sales for the remainder of the globe.

The New Boy was filmed in South Australia, with production funding from Screen Australia’s First Nations Department, which focuses on the lives of the country’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Alongside Samson & Delilah, Thornton is best known for Sweet Country, for which he won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival and the Platform Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017. Both films won the AACTA Award for Best Film from the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts.

Production companies are Fremantle and Longbridge Nominees. The film is produced by Kath Shelper for Scarlett Pictures, Cate Blanchett, Andrew Upton and co-producer Georgie Pym for Dirty Films, and Lorenzo De Maio (of De Maio Entertainment), with Coco Francini serving as executive producer for Dirty Films alongside Packer for Longbridge Nominees.

“Warwick Thornton is one of Australia’s most celebrated filmmakers and his return to Cannes for Un Certain Regard with his extraordinary film is incredibly exciting,” Joel Pearlman, CEO of Roadshow Films, said. “This unique Australian film will captivate audiences globally, and Roadshow Films is very proud to be releasing the film to Australian audiences.”

Check out the first-look image above.

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