Aussie actress and Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett (“Black Bag”) has been musing over the idea of retiring from acting, but one of her festival circuit films, “The New Boy,” is heading to limited release on May 23 before heading to on demand on May 30.
Vertical has sent us a trailer to share that highlights the upcoming film from writer/director Warwick Thornton, as the period drama set in the 1940s focuses on an Australian nun (Blanchett) who is charged with caring for a young Aboriginal boy (played by Aswan Reid) as they clash in a spiritual struggle.
The film’s official synopsis, courtesy of Vertical:
“The New Boy” takes place in 1940s Australia at a remote monastery with a mission for Aboriginal children run by a renegade nun, Sister Eileen (Blanchett). A new charge (Reid) is delivered in the dead of night – a boy who appears to have special powers. However, the boy’s Indigenous spiritual life does not mesh with the mission’s Christianity, and his mysterious power becomes a threat. Sister Eileen is faced with a choice between the traditions of her faith and the truth embodied in the boy in this story of spiritual struggle and the cost of survival.
The new film reminds us of Canada’s own dark history of residential schools and cultural genocide that was headed up by the Catholic Church and embraced by the government. As teachers, nuns, and priests “attempted to civilize” young indigenous children with harsh mistreatment through forced assimilation, which only sped up sexual and substance abuse, the loss of language, traditions, and the family structure, while erasing cultures that “threatened” ideology based on white colonialism and supremacy. Many children died on site (by abuse, negligence, or lack of medical treatment) or by the elements while trying to escape to find their way back to family members/community.
The Playlist previously reviewed “The New Boy” back when it screened at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2023, and you can read our thoughts right here.
You can watch that trailer for “The New Boy” below.
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