Australian films about the death of loved ones

The O'Neills lived happily in their house in the Australian countryside. That was until one day fate struck blindly, taking the life of Peter, the father, leaving his grief-stricken wife Dawn alone with their four children. Among them, eight-year-old Simone denies this reality. She is persuaded that her father still lives in the giant fig tree growing near their house and speaks to her through its leaves. But the tree becomes more and more invasive and threatens the house. It must be felled. Of course, Simone won't allow it.

A nanny, working for a family whose son has just passed away, finds herself put in charge of caring for a lifelike doll that the couple treat as a real child.

Ned Kendall is asked to return to the remote and isolated family home by his sister, to say goodbye to his father who is dying. Ned also brings his young aspiring actress fiancee who struggles with the isolation. When home he starts having memories of his childhood many involving his beautiful twin sister and his older brother. These memories awaken long-buried secrets from the family's past.

Travel plans for three men in ill-fitting wedding tuxedos goes horribly wrong.

Mumbai, India, November 26, 2008. While several terrorists spread hatred and death through the city, others attack the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Both hotel staff and guests risk their lives, making unthinkable sacrifices to protect themselves and keep everyone safe while help arrives.

A freak tsunami traps shoppers at a coastal Australian supermarket inside the building ... along with a 12-foot great white shark.

Locked up for a minor crime, 19 year old JR quickly learns the harsh realities of prison life. Protection, if you can get it, is paramount. JR soon finds himself under the watchful eye of Australia's most notorious criminal, Brendan Lynch, but protection comes at a price.

When teenagers JOSH (Louis Corbett) and LING (Li Lin Jin) join their respective parents, CHRIS (Sam Neill) and Dr LI (Wang Ji) on an archaeological dig in China they encounter something trapped beneath a temple beyond their wildest imagination. A real live Chinese dragon. Two thousand years earlier, to defend his kingdom, the dragon lent an emperor his all powerful pearl. Instead of being returned, the pearl was buried with the emperor beneath his palace, and helpless without its source of power the dragon has remained entombed ever since.

A mysterious woman is perched between the harsh legacy of World War II and the hope of a new life in Australia. A sweeping romantic drama set in 1950s rural Australia following the lives of the Blighs, a wealthy and complicated pastoralist family, who lives in Inverness, NSW.

A small group of town residents have to band together after a devastating ground invasion. As they struggle to survive, they realize they must stay one step ahead of their attackers, and work together for a chance to strike back.

The story of Michelle Payne, the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup.

Karla, a young medical student, is trying to cure her brother, Blake, from a terminal sleep illness called Fatal Familial Insomnia, where you are unable to sleep until you die. On her quest to treat him, a more sinister reason for his condition is revealed.

A terminally ill teen upsets her parents when she falls in love with a small-time drug dealer.

South Africa, 1978. Tim Jenkin and Stephen Lee, two white political activists from the African National Congress imprisoned by the apartheid regime, put a plan in motion to escape from the infamous Pretoria Prison.

James Hayes is a small town police man who is called to the local cemetery in the middle of the night after six people have inexplicably risen from the dead in perfect health. With no memory of their identities, they are determined to discover who they are and what has happened to them. James recognises one of them and along with local doctor Elishia Glass, struggles to keep the case hidden from his colleagues, his family and the world. The six people are all linked in some way and the search begins for someone who knows the truth about how and why they have returned.

A boy finds a strange creature on a beach, and decides to find a home for it in a world where everyone believes there are far more important things to pay attention to.

A comedy film that looks into the loosely connected lives of people with strange sexual fantasies. A woman with a dangerous fantasy and her partner's struggle to please her. A man who begins an affair with his own wife without her knowing anything about it. A couple struggling to keep things together after a sexual experiment spins out of control. A woman who can only find pleasure in her husband's pain. A call centre operator caught in the middle of a dirty and chaotic phone call. And the distractingly charming new neighbour who connects them all.

Based on true events, 16 year-old Jamie falls in with his mother's new boyfriend and his crowd of self-appointed neighborhood watchmen, a relationship that leads to a spree of torture and murder.

While on a seemingly routine job, a jaded hit man discovers that he's not the only one with his target in the crosshairs.

A five-year-old Indian boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home. He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia; 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.

Anja and five friends join anthroplogy student, Dace, on a journey to study a remote, ancient rock painting. Their excitement vanishes when Mel becomes delirious after skinny-dipping in the waterhole. Feverish, bleeding, confused, she physically and mentally regresses to a vicious predatory state. Mel has gone primal. Mel’s lover and friends realise they are the prey as she savagely hunts them down. Before they can escape another one of them starts to regress, posing a hideous choice; kill their friends or be killed by them. Their only hope of survival is through a cave, where Anja learns too late the meaning of the ancient rock art they came to study.

A widowed reporter recruits the help of a federal agent to investigate her late husband's secrets, but the two become the target of unknown attackers. When FBI Agent John Nelson’s key informant, Miles, is abducted and shot, all that’s left is a severed finger. In order to find a new lead, Nelson travels to New York City to inform widowed magazine reporter Rebecca Scott that her long dead husband, Miles, had only recently been murdered to see if she had heard from him in recent years. Perplexed, Scott joins Agent Nelson in the wealthy enclave of Australia’s Gold Coast to find out what really happened. The two soon discover Miles may have been part of an elaborate “Ponzi scheme” to bilk investors, and a vengeful billionaire, out of millions of dollars. As more layers of Miles’ secret life are exposed, can the two stay ahead of the mysterious attackers who will stop at nothing to halt their investigation?

Four friends lose themselves in a carefree South-East Asian holiday. Only three come back. Dave and Alice return home to their young family desperate for answers about Jeremy's mysterious disappearance. When Alice's sister Steph returns not long after, a nasty secret is revealed about the night her boyfriend went missing. But it is only the first of many. Who amongst them knows what happened on that fateful night when they were dancing under a full moon in Cambodia?

Mike has felt alienated and alone for as long as he can remember, until a new boy arrives at his school - awakening feelings and a world of possibilities he'd never before dared to dream of.

In 1989, known as Mendax, Julian Assange and two friends formed a group called the International Subversives. Using early home computers and defining themselves as white hat hackers - those who look but don’t steal – they broke into some of the world’s most powerful and secretive organisations. In the eyes of the US Government, they were a major threat to national security.

Born with an energetic power to absorb fear from others, a young woman must find love to balance the fears of her own and fight an ever growing storm of negative energy.

A story about friendship and loyalty, guilt and vengeance, and the fateful affect the past has on the present.

The Lovers is an epic romance time travel adventure film. Helmed by Roland Joffé from a story by Ajey Jhankar, the film is a sweeping tale of an impossible love set against the backdrop of the first Anglo-Maratha war across two time periods and continents and centred around four characters — a British officer in 18th century colonial India, the Indian woman he falls deeply in love with, an American present-day marine biologist and his wife.

In 2007, in the midst of the drought and water shortages, the NSW State government has unveiled plans to tap into and recycle millions of litres of water trapped in a network of abandoned train tunnels just beneath the heart of Sydney. However the government suddenly goes cold on the plan and it is not made public why. There is talk of homeless people who use the tunnel as shelter going missing, even though the government states that there are no homeless people in there. This, and the silence from the officials and ministers, leads a journalist, Natasha to begin an investigation into a government cover-up. She and her crew Pete (Producer), Steve (Cameraman) and Tangles (Sound Technichian) decide to investigate the story in the tunnel.

To escape the outback, a young Afghan cameleer falls in with a mysterious bushman on the run with stolen Crown gold.

A great white shark hunts the crew of a capsized sailboat along the Great Barrier Reef.

Set against the badlands of colonial Australia where the English rule with a bloody fist and the Irish endure, Ned Kelly discovers he comes from a line of Irish rebels—an uncompromising army of cross dressing bandits immortalised for terrorising their oppressors back in Ireland. Nurtured by the notorious bushranger, Harry Power and fuelled by the unfair arrest of his mother, Kelly recruits a wild bunch of warriors to plot one of the most audacious attacks of anarchy and rebellion the country has ever seen.

Accompanied only by her faithful dog and four camels, an Australian satisfies her craving for solitude by embarking on a solo trip across the desert from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean.

Seventeen talented Australian directors from diverse artistic disciplines each create a chapter of the hauntingly beautiful novel by multi award-winning author Tim Winton. The linking and overlapping stories explore the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people’s lives in a stunning portrait of a small coastal community. As characters face second thoughts and regret, relationships irretrievably alter, resolves are made or broken, and lives change direction forever.

Big Mamma's Boy follows the story of Rocco as he struggles to choose between the love of his life, Katie and his doting, over-protective Italian mother. Fun, heart-wrenching and poignant, this spirited romantic comedy explores Australia's multicultural nuances with hilarious results and goes to show that being a big mamma's boy is a lot tougher than it sounds.

GOLDSTONE, the award-winning new feature from Australian auteur Ivan Sen (Mystery Road), is a complex and stylish crime thriller that explores themes of racism, human trafficking, police corruption, corporate malfeasance, and the trampling of indigenous people’s rights. On the trail of a missing person, troubled indigenous detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen, Mystery Road) finds himself in the small mining town of Goldstone, where he is arrested for drunk driving by local cop Josh (Alex Russell, CBS’s “S.W.A.T.”). When Jay’s motel room is blasted with gun fire, it becomes clear that something larger is at play. While struggling to overcome their mutual distrust, Jay and Josh uncover a web of crime and corruption, which leads directly to the town’s cold-blooded Mayor (two-time Oscar nominee Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook) and its smarmy gold mine director (David Wenham, Lord of the Rings).

Based on the legendary true story of the Red Dog who united a disparate local community while roaming the Australian outback in search of his long lost master.

In 1950s Australia, beautiful, talented dressmaker Tilly returns to her tiny hometown to right wrongs from her past. As she tries to reconcile with her mother, she starts to fall in love while transforming the fashion of the town.

Detectives Tori Lustigman and Nick Manning are assigned a brutal murder case in Bondi, where they begin to uncover mounting evidence to suggest the killing is connected to a spate of unexplained deaths, "suicides" and disappearances throughout the 80s and 90s. Haunted by the disappearance of her teenage brother, Tori's fascination with the case soon turns to fixation. When more ritualistic murders occur with the same bizarre signature, Tori and Nick will need to put their relationships, their careers and their lives on the line to finally reveal the truth.

A remake of 'Reservoir Dogs' by Quentin Tarantino, with the noticeable difference that all the male characters have been replaced with female ones.

A single mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband, battles with her son's fear of a monster lurking in the house, but soon discovers a sinister presence all around her.

After being infected in the wake of a violent pandemic and with only 48 hours to live, a father struggles to find a new home for his baby daughter.

In 1943, five US soldiers are recruited by the OSS for a time travel mission to save the world from the tyranny of Hitler's 25th Reich.

Based on true events, "Nitram" lives with his parents in suburban Australia in the mid-90s. He lives a life of isolation and frustration at never fitting in. As his anger grows, he begins a slow descent into a nightmare that culminates in the most heinous of acts.

Three detectives become embroiled in a tense struggle after a tragic accident that leaves a child in critical condition. One is guilty of a crime, one will try to cover it up, and the other attempts to expose it. How far will these men go to disguise and unravel the truth?

A woman grieving over the death of her daughter loses grip of reality when she begins to think her girl may still be alive.

When young urbanites Ian and Sam decide to go camping, they arrive at their isolated destination to discover another tent already set up, but no sign of its owners. With the other campers at large, Ian and Sam's discovery of a child wandering alone sets off a terrifying chain of events that will push them to their limits – and beyond.

Blinky Bill is a little koala with a big imagination. An adventurer at heart, he dreams of leaving the little town of Green Patch and following in his missing father’s footsteps. When Blinky discovers a mysterious marker that hints at his Dad’s whereabouts, he embarks on a journey that takes him beyond the boundary of Green Patch and into the wild and dangerous Outback.

1975: A 200-ton blue whale gets washed up on a local beach and the kids think it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened in Australia. Behind closed doors, the Mums and Dads of a quiet suburban street are going to celebrate in their own special way, by joining the sexual revolution and throwing a wife-swapping key party. And like the rotting whale, it’s all about to go spectacularly wrong.

Beneath the placid facade of Canberra, amidst rising tension between China and America, senior political journalist Harriet Dunkley uncovers a secret city of interlocked conspiracies, putting innocent lives in danger including her own.