Film Forum

From multifaceted Indigenous filmmaker Ivan Sen (who writes, directs, scores, shoots, and edits), LIMBO stars Simon Baker (The Mentalist, MARGIN CALL) as Travis, a taciturn, troubled detective investigating the cold case murder of an Indigenous girl 20 years earlier. At first met with skepticism by the locals in a remote mining town — whose landscapes and cave-like dwellings are rendered otherworldly by the crisp, widescreen black-and-white photography — he gradually uncovers new details that reveal racist treatment of Indigenous people by the Australian police. 

2023     104 MIN.     AUSTRALIA     IN ENGLISH     BRAINSTORM MEDIA / MUSIC BOX FILMS

Reviews

“A terrific outback noir…a tough, sandblasted thriller that coolly lays out the racism and discrimination the Indigenous population face.”
– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (UK)

“Simon Baker is superb as a jaded detective in Ivan Sen’s visually striking outback procedural…transfixing…a riveting, multilayered genre piece. Weaves in themes of racial inequity, broken individuals and fractured families to build quiet potency.”
– David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

“Simon Baker is transcendent in another beautiful film from Ivan Sen…an eerily meditative production with top-notch performances and a harshly beautiful monochrome veneer.”
– Luke Buckmaster, The Guardian (Australia)

“A starkly atmospheric outback noir — oblique, secretive and as hard boiled as the ground is hard-baked… A craggy, buzz-cut Simon Baker [is] initially near-unrecognizable and never better…joins a long line of fine Australian films taking to the desert to disinter racial trauma, to rebury the bones with more care and awareness, but also enduring fury.”
– Guy Lodge, Variety