Simon Baker stars as a jaded police detective investigating the cold case murder of a local Indigenous girl in the Australian Outback from twenty years earlier, in the Australian independent film Limbo.
Also starring in the film are Rob Collins, Natasha Wanganeen, Nicholas Hope, Mark Coe, and Joshua Warrior.
Release Date
Directed by Ivan Sen, Limbo world premiered at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival and makes its US theatrical premiere on Friday, March 22 at the Film Forum in New York City, with a wider national expansion to follow in select markets.
Synopsis
Limbo stars Simon Baker (The Mentalist, Margin Call, The Devil Wears Prada) as Travis, a taciturn, troubled detective investigating the cold case murder of an Indigenous girl 20 years earlier. At first met with skepticism by the locals in a remote mining town — whose landscapes and cave-like dwellings are rendered otherworldly by the crisp, widescreen black-and-white photography — he gradually uncovers new details that reveal racist treatment of Indigenous people by the Australian police.
Shot in starkly beautiful black and white, Limbo is a penetrating modern noir and a poignant, intimate journey into the complexities of loss. Writer-director Ivan Sen, one of Australia’s foremost Indigenous filmmakers, deftly wields the police procedural to chart the impact of the justice system on Indigenous families in Australia.
Reviews
Calling the cast ‘uniformly excellent’, Guardian review gave the film 4 of 5 stars, writing, “… the Indigenous auteur Ivan Sen – most famous for directing the Mystery Road movies – has returned to crime in the sun-scorched desert. And damn it’s great to have him back doing outback noir, because Sen is so bloody good at it. His latest work, Limbo, is an eerily meditative production with top-notch performances and a harshly beautiful monochrome veneer.”
Variety review also raved about the performance and genre styling, writing, “The visual language of film noir tends to give the truth a place to hide; here, caverns of shadow deliver the goods, but there’s just as much to uncover in broad, punishing daylight: Many shots stress the high, wide sky and dusty sprawl of scrub surrounding this town of tragedy, where individual lives are rendered puny and throwaway against the elements. How can Travis hope to make a dent here? Baker’s grainily compelling performance carries “Limbo,” however, by leaning into that futility. Sturdy and still, becoming one with his aridly dejected surroundings, he tensely waits for any break in the silence, knowing his complicity in echoed history. “Limbo” joins a long line of fine Australian films taking to the desert to disinter racial trauma, to rebury the bones with more care and awareness, but also enduring fury.”
Official Trailer
Watch the official trailer for Limbo