Director : Craig Lahiff

Australia / 2002 / 101 min / 35 mm / Drama

Script : Louis Nowra
Cinematography : Geoffrey Simpson
Editing : Lee Smith
Music : Cezary Skubiszewski
Production : Helen Leake, Nick Powell
Cast : Robert Carlyle, Kerry Fox, Colin Friels, Ben Mendelsohn, David Ngoombujarra

In late 1958, in the remote town of Ceduna in South Australia, a nine year old white girl was brutally raped and bludgeoned to death in a beach cave. Shortly thereafter, in the presence of six local police officers, a full confession was signed by Max Stuart, an itinerant, alcoholic half-caste Aborigine, and his conviction and subsequent hanging for the crime seemed inevitable. An excitable young lawyer, David O’Sullivan, is given the news that he has drawn a ‘bad lottery prize’ – a legal aid case. He must defend Max Stuart. Aided by the young Ruppert Murdoch, who fast making a name for himself with his paper the Adelaide News, O’Sullivan and his legal partner, Helen Devaney, embark on a ‘David and Goliath’ battle that threatens the world of closed ranks, hidden evidence and the establishment, they take the case to the highest courts in the Commonwealth.  A case which divided a nation, and exposed for the first time the rotten foundations on which Australia's most important institutions were built.