Picnic at Hanging Rock
12A

Sun 30 Mar · 14:40

During a rural summer picnic, a few students and a teacher from an Australian girls' school vanish without a trace. Their absence frustrates and haunts the people left behind.

Period • Psychological • Coming-of-age

Part of reRUN

On Valentine’s Day 1900, students from Appleyard College, a girls’ private school in Victoria, Australia, embark on a field trip to an unusual volcanic formation called Hanging Rock.

It’s not until the end of the day that the group realise that some of their party have mysteriously disappeared. Returning to the big screen to celebrate its 50th anniversary in a dazzling 4K restoration, Peter Weir’s adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s novel has lost none of its mystique or mesmerising power.

Details

Duration

1hr 47mins

Director

Peter Weir

Distributor

British Film Institute

Featuring

Rachel Roberts • Anne-Louise Lambert • Vivean Gray

Year

1975

Country of origin

Australia

Language

English

Strobe lighting

Guidance unavailable

Content guidance

Violence

“Peter Weir’s 1975 parable of imperial anxiety and sexual hysteria, rereleased for its 50th anniversary, is a classic of Australian new wave cinema.”
The Guardian

“Horror need not always be a long-fanged gentleman in evening clothes or a dismembered corpse or a doctor who keeps a brain in his gold fish bowl. It may be a warm sunny day, the innocence of girlhood and hints of unexplored sexuality that combine to produce a euphoria so intense it becomes transporting, a state beyond life or death. Such horror is unspeakable not because it is gruesome but because it remains outside the realm of things that can be easily defined or explained in conventional ways.”
Vincent Canby - The New York Times