Who is Warwick Thornton?
Warwick Thornton is an Aboriginal Australian filmmaker and cinematographer from Alice Springs, a Kaytetye man known for Samson and Delilah, Sweet Country and The New Boy.
Born in 1970, Thornton grew up in Alice Springs and began working at the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association, where he learned camera skills. He later studied cinematography at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney.
His short film Nana won a Crystal Bear at the Berlin Film Festival in 2008. His first feature, Samson and Delilah, won the Camera d'Or at Cannes in 2009.
Major films
Sweet Country, a western set in the Northern Territory in the 1920s, won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 2017. The New Boy, released in 2023, starred Cate Blanchett as a nun running a remote orphanage.
Thornton also works as a cinematographer on other directors' films, and he created the television series Firebite, about Aboriginal vampire hunters in an outback mining town.
His films often show life in Central Australia with honesty, humour and striking visuals, and he is regarded as one of the leading voices in Indigenous filmmaking.
Did You Know?
Thornton's mother, Freda Glynn, co-founded the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association and Imparja Television.