After playing the Sundance Film Festival, Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent (our interview) will see her The Nightingale (read our review), the followup to her indie smash The Babadook, released in theaters August 2, 2019, via IFC.

“Set in Tasmania in 1825, The Nightingale follows a 21-year-old Irish female convict (Aisling Franciosi) who witnesses the brutal murder of her husband and baby by her soldier master and his cronies. Unable to find justice, she takes an Aboriginal male tracker with her through the hellish wilderness to seek revenge on the men.”

“The film is a study on violence and what a violent mind and therefore a violent society can do to damage the human spirit,” Kent told Variety. “It’s about how we can evolve through and beyond that violence. For me ‘The Nightingale’ is about love — not in a schmaltzy way — but its power to allow us to evolve as human beings.”

The cast also includes Sam Claflin, Damon Herriman, Ewen Leslie, Harry Greenwood, Baykali Ganambarr and Magnolia Maymuru.

The Nightingale won the Special Jury Prize at the 2018 Venice International Film Festival. Bloody Disgusting Meredith Borders wrote in her review that “The Nightingale is so gorgeously, urgently shot, so pressing and important, that a film set in 1820s Tasmania feels as current and present as possible.”