Justin Kurzel started touring festivals with neo-Nazi thriller The Order – starring Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult and Tye Sheridan – in Venice in
Justin Kurzel started touring festivals with neo-Nazi thriller The Order – starring Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult and Tye Sheridan – in Venice in September where the film world premiered in Competition to forceful reviews.
Directed from a screenplay by Zach Baylin based on the 1989 book, The Silent Brotherhood, the film follows the real-life 1980s white supremacist group The Order, led by Robert Jay Mathews, which turned to counterfeiting and heists to fund its activities.
Law stars as a jaded FBI agent alongside Sheridan as an eager newborn police detective, who are on the tail of the gang, and Mathews, played by Hoult.
Since Venice, the film has played at Toronto and opened the Zurich Film Festival as well as Marrakech over this weekend. Its resonance has also evolved in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential elections in November.
Talking to Deadline in Marrakech, the Australian director acknowledges that the film’s upcoming U.S. release on December 6 by Vertical has taken on a very different vibe from when the deal was first struck with AGC Studios during Cannes in May.
“From writing it, to shooting it, to editing it and now releasing it, the world has kept on changing and changing and changing. The film has had a really different relationship with each time period that it’s been in,” says Kurzel, who joined the project in 2020.
“What I loved about it was that this story is told in the past, in the 80s, but, when you can find those stories that that somehow quite effortlessly speak to the zeitgeist of the present, there’s something quite amazing about that,” he continues.
As Trump prepares to return to power there is talk that he may hold good on a promise to issue a presidential pardon canceling sentences meted out to the rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6 in response to his false claims of voting irregularities.
Among those currently in jail are members of far-right groups such as the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, who are serving time on charges of having planned the assault over many weeks, and then whipping up some 2,000 pro-Trump rioters who stormed the Capitol.
Justin Kurzel in Marrakech
Getty Images
“My feelings about where it sits in the world have shifted constantly because there’s been so much change. Zach Baylin gave it to me three months before January 6. I was desperately looking for an American film to make and it reminded me of films that I really loved, especially genre films.”
At the heart of the storyline is a real-life book called ‘The Turner Diaries’, written by William Luther Pierce, founder and chairman of the white nationalist National Alliance group, which advocates for revolution and gallows being erected in the street on a so-called “Day of the Rope” for the execution of liberals.
“I had no idea about ‘The Turner Diaries’,” says Kurzel. “I remember working with Zach and January 6 happening, and then seeing ‘Day of the rope’ props outside the Capitol building and people carrying The Turner Diaries. I was shocked by the stealth like way the book had been playing underneath to this day. It’s kind of frightening how much it had traveled.”
The Australian director was in the U.S. ahead of the 2024 presidential elections in November, to shoot two episodes of Black Rabbit, the narrow series about New York’s nightlife scene, written by Baylin and his wife Kate Susman, and starring Jason Bateman and Law among others.
“There was real uncertainty about what was going to happen, and I think even now, with the people that I speak to in the States, there’s a sort of shock at that popular vote and how that kind of played out and now there’s just a general sense of uncertainty as to what’s going on,” says Kurzel.
He adds that he has never worked on a film where he has had so little understanding of where it was going to land on its release.
“Our sense of where it’s placed and how it’s going to be screened, has been forever kind of shifting and changing. I’ve never really done a film, where I have constantly thought, ‘How is this going to play?’ because the environment around it has changed so much,” he said.
Quizzed on whether he fears the film could unwittingly promote ‘The Turner Diaries’ to more people, Kurzel says he feels compelled to talk about its influence.
“It’s already out there and that was what I thought was really important… it’s a book that’s been constantly kind of bubbling away underneath. I think people need to know that it’s out there, the dangers of it, and what it is. It’s much more important to kind of understand what’s in those shadows, rather than just ignore it,” he says.
The Order follows in the wake of a number of films by Kurzel tackling male violence beginning with his first film feature The Snowtown Murders and continuing with The True History of the Kelly Gang and Nitram.
“I think there has been an organic interest in certain stories. With Snowtown, it was in a community that I grew up in. I can remember being around a certain sort of masculine energy that I was scared of and at the same time, lived in,” Kurzel says of this aspect of his work.
“It’s definitely something that I’ve continued to be curious about, I don’t quite know why. I’m definitely not searching for it but I am interested in why it occurs, and what are those communities around where it happens.”
Kurzel was at the Marrakech Film Festival for a third time having with The Snowtown Murders in 2011, which played in Competition and won the jury prize and best actor for Daniel Henshall.
He is among a raft of big-name directors attending this year which also include Sean Penn, Walter Salles, Ava DuVernay, Justine Triet, Tim Burton, Jeff Nichols and Mohamad Rasoulof.
Kurzel suggests the festival’s draw is its focus on cinema and fresh talent as well as the opportunity to hang-out with other established filmmakers, mentioning how he had chatted with Penn about his feature debut The Indian Runner over a drink at the bar the previous night.
“It’s one of those films that really inspired me when I was just starting to get into film, so that’s amazing to have that kind of one-on-one insight with someone you really think highly of,” he says.
Kurzel confirmed he has a number of projects on the go, including an adaptation of Dean Kuipers’ book ‘Burning Rainbow Farm’, about the real-life, fatal stand-off in Michigan between two pro-Marijuana activists and FBI agents and local police.
“I’ve been working on a new script by Tommy Murphy, an Australian writer. I’ve been developing it for quite a while and am excited about that one,” he says.
Further projects include horror film Mice, with long-time writing partner Shaun Grant, which they are producing under the banner of their company Thirdborn with Made Up Stories and Nicole Kidman and Per Saari’s Blossom Films, and American Civil War drama, Days Without End, while he has just wrapped WWII drama The Narrow Road to the Deep North with Jacob Elordi.
Kurzel says he likes to to keep a number of projects turning over in the current arduous financing climate for independent filmmaking.
“It’s harder and harder to make things,” he says. “A big part of being a director is to have many projects that you feel passionate about and you feel like you want to get up, because they’re becoming increasingly more difficult, especially some of the ones that I’ve been sort of curious about and interested in.”
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