The award-winning local Australian queer indie film, The Greenhouse is finally coming to Netflix to reach a global audience. The film premiered at the Mardi gras Film Festival in 2021 before screening at the London Film Festival.
With brilliant reviews from critics and numerous awards and accolades at Australian film festivals, this time-travelling sci-fi film is written and directed by Thomas Wilson-White who has claimed the film to be largely autobiographical. He has derived inspiration from his experience of growing up as an adolescent with two mothers in regional Australia.
In the film, the protagonist, Beth, finds a way to travel back in time on her family’s isolated farm, on the eve of her mother’s sixtieth birthday. She wants to relive the fond memories of her lost love and eventually finds out about her second mother, Lillian who is still alive.
This event causes her to confront her own feelings and sexuality. However, when her mother and family discover her secret, their fates are in jeopardy.
Having premiered in 2021, the film had finished filming during the pandemic that was indeed a difficult time for everyone. Since the pandemic affected cinema and subsequent festivals adversely, the director said, “For a while, we wondered if we would ever screen our film for an audience.”
With its brilliant and unique premise, the film won the Best Film award at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival and Gold Coast Film Festival, besides winning other awards, namely an Australian Directors Guild Award and the Mardi Gras Film Festival’s Audience Choice Award.
Starring Kirsty Marillier, Rhondda Findleton, Jane Watt and others, Wilson-White said that he “couldn’t be prouder” to partner with the streaming service to help the film reach a wider and global LGBTQIA+ audience.
The Greenhouse will premiere on Netflix on February 16th, 2022.
