When Jennifer Kent brought her first feature to Sundance in 2014, it garnered instant attention and critical acclaim, going on to become a major commercial success, for a low-budget indie horror pic. That film was The Babadook—a contemporary genre classic—and after debuting her latest in Venice, the director is in Sundance this week with The Nightingale, which may well see similar results.

In comparison to the terrifying Babadook, a work of pure invention, The Nightingale features fictional characters existing within an all-too-real world. Aisling Franciosi stars as Clare, a young Irish convict who sees terrible violence enacted on herself and her family by a merciless British officer (Sam Claflin). Enlisting the aid of an Aboriginal tracker (Baykali Ganambarr), Clare sets out through the Tasmanian wilderness in pursuit of brutal revenge.

While Kent’s narratives emerge from a place of instinct, the director’s latest was the product of concerns both personal and societal. “It was driven by my response to violence that was in the media. I’d also had some loss in my own life, so I was in a place where I was really looking at, what’s it all about?” Kent explained, sitting down with Franciosi at Deadline’s Sundance Studio. “I wanted to tell a story about light in the darkness, and ask the question, ‘How can we keep qualities like love, compassion, kindness, even in the darkest of times?'”