RADIANCE

Radiance tells the story of three young women who reunite, after many years apart, for their mother's funeral, | grieve, reconcile and celebrate. Over the course of 24 hours the skeletons in the family closet emerge, rattling violently.

Cressy, the eldest, is a diva—an opera singer who is reluctant to revisit the past and certainly doesn't want to share it with her sisters However, Mae, the middle sister, believes that Cressy hasn't shared enough. Nona, the youngest—the party girl—just wants them all to be one big, happy familyl

Forced lo confront their mother's legacy of half-truths, unfinished business and secrets the three sisters are finally able to lay to rest the ghosts of the past along with the ashes of their mother's body. Love, madness" and a ramshackle house on the remote Queensland coast conspire to create an irreverent tale of family intrigue.

Radiance aspires to a new level of Australian cinema, weaving together a brave story of personal reconciliation with political themes of generational distance and the strength of the indigenous spirit. Director Rachel Perkins Meshes out detailed characters adapted from Louis Nowra's fantastic script. The result is a deeply intimate and profound experience which soars.

"Like the best work of fellow Aboriginal filmmakers...the truest moments here are near wordless ones, where emotions are unspoken but deeply felt, where gestures and eyes speak volumes. The greatest and most welcome evolution of 1990s Australian cinema has been the emergence of the Aboriginal cinematic voice, and Radiance is another poetic and much-needed utterance." - Andrew L. Urban, Cinema Papers

Rachel Perkins is one of the foremost indigenous filmmakers working in the Australian industry. At 28, her career spans ten years of specialisation in this burgeoning sector of Australian film and television. Perkins was awarded the very first indigenous scholarship to study producing at the Australian Film, Television and Radio school. From her beginnings with the Aboriginal owned station Imparja Television, she went on to direct and produce a range of films, documentaries and series including Blood Brothers, From Spirit to Spirit, Songlines, Crim TV, From the Bush, Manyu Wanna and My Life As I Live It. Radiance is Rachel Perkins' debut feature.