Picnic at Hanging Rock

Still just as haunting and beguiling as it was 50 years ago, Picnic at Hanging Rock returns to the big screen in a breathtaking new 4k restoration. Valentine’s Day in the year 1900 proves to be a fateful holiday for the students and faculty at Appleyard College, an all-girls private school in central Victoria, after three students and a teacher inexplicably vanish. Adapting Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel of the same name, director Peter Weir approaches the central mystery with more of an Antonioni gaze than an Agatha Christie one.

An existential chronicle of hushed desires and class with an otherworldly beauty, Picnic at Hanging Rock remains one of Australian cinema’s biggest exports, half a century after bringing the country onto the world cinema stage.