The New Boy (2023)

Cate Blanchett as: Sister Eileen

Directed by: Warwick Thornton
Selected Cast: Aswan Reid, Deborah Mailman, Wayne Blair
Written by: Warwick Thornton
Release Year: 2023
Genre: Drama
MPAA Rating: 12A (UK), M (Australia)

IMDb | Photos | Videos | Official Site

In a remote monastery in 1940s Australia, a mission for Aboriginal children is run by a renegade nun, Sister Eileen. A new charge (Aswan Reid) is delivered in the dead of night – a boy who appears to have special powers. When the monastery takes possession of a precious relic, a large carving of Christ on the cross, the new boy encounters Jesus for the first time and is transfixed. However, the boy’s Indigenous spiritual life does not gel with the mission’s Christianity and his mysterious power becomes a threat. Sister Eileen is faced with a choice between the traditions of her faith and the truth embodied in the boy, in this story of spiritual struggle and the cost of survival.

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Behind the scenes; InterviewRelated Videos

The second video is a playlists of selected interviews, just click on the playlist icon/thumbnails to see the other videos in it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87zrgtj8ZA8

Quotes from Cate Blanchett

“My world view has been shifted in ways beyond articulation by the films Warwick’s made. He’s a singular, mercurial filmmaker, yet there is a beguiling universality to the stories he chooses to tell. He is, quite simply, one of Australia’s greats.” (Production Notes, 2023)
On Aswan Reid: “What has been asked of Aswan would be almost impossible for any mature actor. For an 11-year-old to be completely displaced from country into a completely new environment, into a métier that he’s never been in before, with a whole lot of adults and rules and regulations and responsibilities – to have watched him grow and evolve … I’m just so in awe of him.”
On the young cast: “I must say, I approach a set with trepidation when I know there are going to be children on it. There’s a duty of care, obviously, but also there are going to be limitations on what one can do, because often filming can be freewheeling and a bit chaotic, but they were absolutely extraordinary. Extraordinary. The level of support they showed to Aswan, their discipline, their curiosity, but also they were just so alive to the situations.” (Sydney Morning Herald, June 2023)
On her character, Sister Eileen: “We were speaking to Warwick about doing something and that’s when he mentioned the script he had been working on with [writer] Kath Shelper. The script was incredible, but the main character was a priest rather than a nun. It was Andrew who suggested that switch and now here we are. It was wonderful to go home and to work with an Australian director who really understands the country and really speaks to Australians as well as an international audience.” (Hello!, March 2024)

Quotes from Others

Warwick Thornton:
— “New Boys are all around us. They’re children who recognise safety and can adapt to survive in different situations. The New Boy is incredibly innocent, he doesn’t understand this different world but is happy to walk into that world and educate himself in that world, to survive in that world.
It’s like any Indigenous person through the last 250 years of colonisation. Your lore, your culture and everything has just been completely obliterated to extinction in a strange way. You have to adapt in this new world that is like a plague, like a virus that has completely taken over your life and shut down everything that you’ve believed in. Humans are able to adapt very quickly to survive in any situation, in any environment, in any landscape. In a strange way, that’s what the New Boy is. He’s not judging anybody. He’s just surviving.”
— On Aswan Reid: “I’m so proud of Aswan [Reid]. He is the New Boy. He’s a survivalist in his own right as a child and a very special human being. If cinema looks after him, there’ll be something magical over the next 50 years.”
Andrew Upton:
— “When Warwick [Thornton] wanted to approach them [Nick Cave and Warren Ellis] to compose I felt it was a perfect choice. Nick and Warren have a grandeur and a regard for classical form coupled with a probing punky urge and authenticity which sits very well with Warwick’s own particular aesthetic. The New Boy is at once a meditative poem on spirituality and childhood and a perky fuck you to the oppressive, the overbearing and the dogmatic.”

Trivia & Facts

Filmed in Australia.
The film premiered under Un Certain Regard section of the 76th Cannes Film Festival on 19 May 2023.
This is Aswan Reid’s first role as an actor.
The film is loosely based on Warwick Thornton’s experience growing up and being sent to a remote boarding school, run by Spanish monks, as a young Aboriginal kid by his mother.
Cate Blanchett is also a producer on this film, through her production company, Dirty Films.
At age 11, Aswan Reid is the youngest actor to win the Best Actor Award at the Australian Academy of Film and Television Arts (AACTA) Awards, more accolades here.
On the first draft of the screenplay which was written 20 years ago, Sister Eileen was originally written as a priest, it was changed to Sister Eileen at the suggestion of Andrew Upton while Warwick Thornton was re-visiting the story with Cate Blanchett on board the film.
Cate Blanchett earned two nominations at the AACTAs, one for lead actress in film and another one as producer on The New Boy.
Warwick Thornton serves as the director, writer, and director of photography for the film.
Warwick Thornton won the Golden Frog at the 2023 Camerimage Film Festival, and Spotlight Award at the 2024 American Society of Cinematographers.
This is the fourth film to win the top prize, Golden Frog, at Camerimage Film Festival with Cate Blanchett starring in it. The other three other films are where she played the title role: Elizabeth (1998) cinematography by Remi Adefarasin, Carol (2015) cinematography by Ed Lachman, and TÁR (2022) cinematography by Florian Hoffmeister.
Cate Blanchett said that she had been wanting to work with Warwick Thornton, they had met at Berlinale when they both has TV series screening at the festival, then she reached out to him during COVID-19 lockdown.