'The Stranger', a dark thriller filmed around Adelaide in 2020, a most-watched film on Netflix and Cannes hit
Joel Egerton (left) and Sean Harris in the dark psychological thriller The Stranger, filmed around Adelaide in 2020.
The Stranger, filmed around Adelaide and at the South Australian Film Corporation studios in Glenside in 2020, became the third most watched movie around the world on Netflix in 2022 and received a standing ovation and rave reviews on its premiere as part of the Cannes Film Festival un certain regard programme.
The Stranger was nominated for 11 Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards, including best film, best direction, best lead actor, best supporting actor, best supporting actress and best cinematography. Directed and written by Thomas M. Wright (Acute Misfortune), the film features Joel Edgerton (Loving, Boy Erased) and Sean Harris (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, The King) as two strangers who form a friendship.
For Henry (Harris), worn down by a life of physical labour, it’s a dream come true as his new friend Mark (Edgerton) becomes his saviour and ally. But neither is who they appear to be, each carrying secrets that threaten to ruin them – and in the background, one of Australia’s largest police operations is closing in.
Variety called The Stranger an eerie understated thriller and Screen Daily found it “intense and unnerving” with an atmosphere “that brings to mind Peter Weir’s Picnic At Hanging Rock”. Harris and Edgerton were applauded as the two leads, with Deadline praising their ”excellent” performances and Digital Journal declaring them “two of the most intense performances to grip the Cannes Film Festival”.
The Stranger was a See-Saw Films, Anonymous Content and Blue-Tongue Films production, supported by the South Australian Film Corporation. The film was produced by Rachel Gardner, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, Joel Edgerton, Kerry Kohansky-Roberts, Kim Hodgert. The Stranger star and producer Joel Edgerton, pondering the film’s success without a big promotional budget, believed it relied on “universally resonant” themes: “There’s this feeling when you make any Australian film that, unless you’re maybe a George Miller or a Baz Luhrmann and you have a budget upwards of $100 million, it’s not really a profit exercise. Our work can be perceived as ‘small’ and I don’t think that’s the right way of looking at things. A film like The Stranger, it’s a patient watch but it’s thrilling”.
Based on the non-fiction book by Kate Kyriacou, The Stranger became embroiled in controversy as a fictionalised account of the major real-life manhunt for the killer of 13-year-old Daniel Morcombe, who was abducted on Queensland's Sunshine Coast in 2003 on his way to buy Christmas presents for his family at a local shopping mall. He was later murdered. Eight years later, his killer, known pedophile Brett Peter Cowan, was finally arrested and charged.
