Production has begun on Bunya Productions’ Limbo ,the latest feature film by Australian auteur Ivan Sen. Featuring AACTA Award-winning, Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated actor, Simon Baker (Breath, The Guardian, The Mentalist, High Ground), with Rob Collins (The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson, Firebite), Natasha Wanganeen (Rabbit Proof Fence, Firebite) and Nicholas Hope (Bad Boy Bubby, The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson). Baker stars as Travis Hurley, a detective who arrives in a small Australian outback town to investigate a 20-year-old unsolved murder of a local Aboriginal girl. Forming bonds with the victim’s fractured family, Travis unravels a series of hard truths, highlighting the complexities of loss and injustice experienced by First Nations Australians. Limbo will be the seventh feature by Gold Coast resident Sen, following the success of his 2022 sci-fi film Loveland and celebrated outback mysteries Goldstone and Mystery Road (now a popular ABC series).
The production is supported by Screen Queensland’s Screen Finance program . Limbo is set to inject around $1 million into the Queensland economy and create an estimated 50 jobs for Queenslanders, as well as trainee attachment opportunities for emerging and First Nations practitioners. Screen Queensland CEO Kylie Munnich said that in addition to employment and economic benefits, one of the main intentions behind the Screen Finance program is to support Queensland screen producers and key creatives to make screen stories for global audiences.
“Queenslander Ivan Sen is one of the nation’s most unique and prolific film creatives. He is a deeply influential First Nations voice, shaping our country’s cultural landscape and achieving box office success” Munnich commented “Screen Queensland proudly supported Ivan’s previous Bunya Productions films Loveland, Mystery Road and Goldstone and we eagerly await the release of Limbo in cinemas in 2023.”
Sen described the film as a ‘desert noir’ or ‘neo western’, setting the dark, foreboding whodunnit against the backdrop of the rugged Australian desert. “Limbo is a quest for truth — an intimate study in intergenerational trauma and its ongoing post-colonial effects on Indigenous Australia,” Sen commented “The world of Limbo is both nostalgic and authentic, and Simon is such a versatile and disciplined performer, who just exudes Hurley’s clashing stoicism and vulnerability that is simply electric on screen.” Renowned for writing, directing, editing, handling cinematography and scoring his own films, Sen is also a co-producer on Limbo, alongside Bunya Productions’ David Jowsey and Greer Simpkin (Mystery Road Origin, The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson, High Ground, Sweet Country) and Rachel Higgins (Apprentice, Red Hill).
Limbo is a Bunya Productions film presented by the ABC and Screen Queensland in association with Windalong Films and the South Australian Film Corporation. The film will be distributed by Dark Matter Distribution. The production is filming now in Coober Pedy in South Australia.
