Julia Garner & Jessica Henwick in Australia’s ‘The Royal Hotel’ Trailer
by Alex Billington
September 7, 2023
Source: YouTube
“We have sunshine and booze-in-a-box. Let’s put up with it for a few weeks.” Neon has revealed the first official trailer for The Royal Hotel, the second narrative feature made by acclaimed Australian filmmaker Kitty Green, her follow-up to The Assistant. This recently premiered at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival last weekend, and will next be playing at Toronto, London, San Sebastian, and the Adelaide Film Festival in Australia. Americans Hanna & Liv are best friends backpacking in Australia. After they run out of money, Liv, looking for an adventure, convinces Hanna to take a temporary live-in job behind the bar of a pub called ‘The Roval Hotel’ in a remote Outback mining town. Bar owner Billy and a host of locals give the girls a riotous introduction to Down Under drinking culture but soon Hanna & Liv find themselves trapped in an unnerving situation that grows rapidly out of their control. This stars Julia Garner & Jessica Henwick, with Toby Wallace, Hugo Weaving, Ursula Yovich, Daniel Henshall, Herbert Nordrum, James Frecheville. Okay this looks damn good…! A subversive, clever thriller – will be watching it when it opens.
Here’s the first official trailer (+ poster) for Kitty Green’s The Royal Hotel, direct from YouTube:
Via TIFF: “Hanna (Garner) and Liv (Henwick) are backpacking across Australia when they run out of money and are forced to take jobs at The Royal Hotel, a bar in the outback. They’re immediately confronted by the sea of rowdy men who fill the bar on a daily basis. There’s no varnish to their testosterone and while Billy (Hugo Weaving), the perpetually drunk owner of the pub, toes the line and pushes back on the men when they go too far, he’s also enabled their behaviour in the first place. Liv tries to brush off the advances, but this only makes Hanna more anxious, as she starts to worry about her friend’s safety in addition to her own. It’s soon clear that the longer the women stick around, the more likely this continual threat will catch up to them.” The Royal Hotel is directed by Australian filmmaker Kitty Green, director of the film The Assistant previously, and the docs Ukraine Is Not a Brothel and Casting JonBenet. The screenplay is by Kitty Green and Oscar Redding. Produced by Iain Canning, Kath Shelper, Emile Sherman, Liz Watts. This premiered at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival. Neon opens The Royal Hotel in select US theaters on October 6th, 2023.
 |
