Actors Leah Purcell, Essie Davis and Caleb Landry Jones have received nominations along with Australian feature When Pomegranates Howl in the region’s highest accolade in film, the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
Winners are being determined by the APSA International Jury, and will be announced on Thursday 11 November at the 14th APSA Ceremony on Australia’s spectacular Gold Coast, and streamed across the globe. In 2021, 38 films from 25 Asia Pacific countries and areas were nominated, further highlighting the outstanding achievement of a nomination in the Awards, which encompass 70 countries and areas and represent half the world’s film output.
Two Australians are nominated for Best Performance by an Actress. Leah Purcell is nominated for her powerhouse performance in The Drover’s Wife The Legend of Molly Johnson which Purcell also wrote and directed. Essie Davisis nominated for her triumphant role in Gaysorn Thavat’s acclaimed social drama, The Justice of Bunny King (NZ). Both films screend in the Brisbane International Film Festival, and are screening at the Sydney Film Festival, ahead of their cinema release.
Australian/Afghanistan co-production When Pomegranates Howl has been selected as Australia’s official submission for the Best International Feature Film at the 2022 Academy Awards, as well as being nominated for Best Youth Film at the 2021 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Written and directed by Granaz Moussavi (My Tehran for Sale) this unforgettable anti-war drama, which was shot in Afghanistan, follows Hewad an irrepressible nine-year old boy, who hustles on the streets of Kabul – selling everything from pomegranate juice to protection from the evil eye.
Partly funded by the Adelaide Film Festival and post-produced in Adelaide, When Pomegranates Howl is the latest film from Moussavi, a graduate of AFTRS and Adelaide’s Flinders University, who immigrated to Australia from Tehran with her family in the late 90s. Since that time, she has distinguished herself as a contemporary poet, film director and screenwriter.
Distributed in Australia by Bonsai Films, this poignant feature will next be seen at the 2021 Sydney Film Festival along with a late November preview season in Sydney and Canberra, prior to a select theatrical release in the first quarter of 2022.
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