Nangana
2018 · 30m
Directed by Jamie Murray
Genres: drama, mystery, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
In rural Australia, half-brothers Pup and Kit roam a desolate landscape hunting a kill for a mysterious employer, until the hunter becomes the hunted.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Nangana plays it pretty straight—rural noir, power inversion, desolate landscape as character—which is fine, but it's doing exactly what you'd expect a thriller about hunters hunted to do. I'm not seeing the subversive move that makes me lean forward.
Murray demonstrates real control over pacing and atmosphere, letting the Australian emptiness do formal work that echoes genre precedent from Peckinpah through to modern revisionist westerns; the 30-minute constraint forces disciplined storytelling that justifies every scene.
The decision to keep the employer unseen and the brothers' motivation opaque until the final reveal transforms what could be generic into something genuinely unsettling—that withholding of information becomes the film's architecture, and it's done with almost no dialogue.
Reviews
'Nangana' is deceptively fascinating with a watertight script from Murray... Ultimately, 'Nangana' is worth one's while. With convincing cast, compelling storyline and the inescapable landscape of raw, bucolic Australian terrain to supplement the narrative, the film is a nuanced tale of myths, mystery and raw human entanglements.