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The Nightingale

2018 2h 16m
Drama Thriller Western
MOVIEVIBE Rating
7.0/10
696 reviews
Your Rating
The Nightingale

In 1825, Clare, a 21-year-old Irish convict, chases a British soldier through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. She enlists the services of an Aboriginal tracker who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.

"Her song will not be silenced."

Top Billed Cast

Aisling Franciosi
Aisling Franciosi
Clare
Sam Claflin
Sam Claflin
Hawkins
Baykali Ganambarr
Baykali Ganambarr
Billy
Damon Herriman
Damon Herriman
Ruse
Harry Greenwood
Harry Greenwood
Jago
Ewen Leslie
Ewen Leslie
Goodwin
Charlie Shotwell
Charlie Shotwell
Eddie
Michael Sheasby
Michael Sheasby
Aidan

Detailed Critic & Audience Reviews

S SWITCH. Verified TMDB Critic
2019-06-14

Even with its flaws, this feminist Western is too violent, too dirty, too bloody, and too barbaric to be forgotten easily. When the lights in the cinema came on, the woman next to me was crying and, a few rows over, someone murmured that they had now had PTSD. 'The Nightingale’ is not an easy film to watch and certainly not one to expect to come out of laughing or feeling terrific. But it will make you will feel something, which is a rare thing for a film to be able to do today.
- Jake Watt

Read Jake's full article...
https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-the-nightingale-a-bl...

S Stephen Campbell Verified TMDB Critic
2019-12-14

**_A superb, albeit harrowing drama about colonial violence, misogyny, and racism_**

>_Whether the Blacks deserve any mercy at the hands of the pioneering squatters is an open question, but that they get none is certain. They are a doomed race, and before many years they will be completely wiped out of the land._

- Harold Finch-Hatton; _Advance Australia! An Account of Eight Year's Work, Wandering and Amusement in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria_ (1885)

>_If Judas Chamberlain can find a black, or brown or yellow race in Asia or Africa, that has as high a standard of civilisat...

M Manuel São Bento Verified TMDB Critic
2019-12-30

Jennifer Kent delivered one of the best horror movies of the decade, The Babadook. With The Nightingale, only her second feature film, she offers one of the most visually brutal, shocking, jaw-dropping, violent revenge stories ever. This movie is the definition of “not for everyone.”

Rating: A-...

B badelf Verified TMDB Critic
2026-02-02

**The Nightingale** (2018)
*Directed by Jennifer Kent*

Jennifer Kent's *The Nightingale* is a cold, hard look at colonialism, unflinching in its depiction of the brutality that empires are built upon. Set in 1825 Tasmania, it follows Clare (Aisling Franciosi), a young Irish convict, and Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), an Aboriginal tracker, through the wilderness as they pursue a British officer who has committed unspeakable atrocities. This is not entertainment; this is witness, testimony, a reckoning with historical crimes that we would prefer to forget.

Kent has produced an incredible p...