Americans Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) are best friends backpacking in Australia. After they run out of money, Liv, looking for an adventure, convinces Hanna to take a temporary live-in job behind the bar of a pub called ‘The Royal Hotel’ in a remote Outback mining town. Bar owner Billy and a host of locals give the girls a riotous introduction to Down Under drinking culture but soon Hanna and Liv find themselves trapped in an unnerving situation that grows rapidly out of their control.
Aussie filmmaker Kitty Green’s latest pic, The Royal Hotel, starring Julia Garner, and Fingernails, the latest film from Christos Nikou, with Riz Ahmed and Jessie Buckley, have been added to San Sebastian’s competition lineup.
Overall, six films have been announced as late additions to proceedings in San Seb. The other titles are Kalak (Isabella Eklöf), The Successor (Xavier Legrand), Great Absence (Kei Chika-Ura), and the debut from Tzu-Hui Peng and Ping-Wen Wang, A Journey in Spring. Additionally, the French pic A Real Job, directed by Thomas Lilti, will play the fest’s special screenings section.
The Royal Hotel is Kitty Green’s first feature since her 2019 breakout, The Assistant. The film tells the tale of two backpackers (Garner and Jessica Henwick) who take a job in a pub in the remote Australian Outback. Neon has acquired North American rights to the film. Following his debut Apples, which played Telluride, Toronto, and Venice, director Nikou assembled an A-list cast including Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed, Jeremy Allen White, Luke Wilson, and Annie Murphy for his second movie and first English-language film, Fingernails. The film has been described as a thought-provoking romantic drama about an institution that tests the presence of romantic love between couples.
Continue reading »
Inventing Anna and Ozark star Julia Garner isn’t looking to slow down, as she is set to star in The Royal Hotel, sources tell Deadline. The film reteams Garner with Kitty Green, who helmed The Assistant, which earned Garner an Independent Spirit Award nomination.
Green is directing Royal Hotel and co-writing the script with Oscar Redding. The pic will be produced by See-Saw Films, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, Liz Watts, Kath Shelper. Simon Gillis will exec produce.
The story follows American backpackers Hannah and her friend Sydney, who resort to a working holiday at the Royal Hotel, a bar in a tiny, male-dominated mining town deep in the Australian Outback. The hotel is notorious for cycling through young female employees every few months, and it isn’t long before they are subjected to mind games and manipulation, trapped in the middle of nowhere, unsure who to trust. Production starts thisin the summer.
Garner’s 2022 is off to quite the start with roles in Netflix’s final season of Ozark and in the Shonda Rhimes-Anna Delvey limited series Inventing Anna. Both already have earned critical praise, with Part 2 of the final season of Ozark bowing in April. On the film side, Garner recently signed on to the Paramount thriller Apartment 7A. [Source]
