The Best of the Worst is a student-curated season, chosen for ACMI Cinema 3 by panelists, as part of Swinburne University of Technology’s Movie Mogul project, in partnership with ACMI.
The Best of the Worst is a collection of some of Australia’s best films about some of the worst Australian criminals. The film season includes: Chopper (Andrew Dominik, 2000), Snowtown (Justin Kurzel, 2011), Animal Kingdom (David Michôd, 2010), and The Boys (Rowan Woods, 1998).
These films were selected as they are critically acclaimed, winning various awards, and reflect the same era of Australia, the 1970s-1990s.
Chopper is a biographical crime film set in Melbourne about Mark “Chopper” Read, Australia’s most famous criminal, who became a celebrity while claiming to only target drug dealers and other criminals.
Snowtown is a chilling psychological crime drama set in Adelaide, told from the perspective of 15-year-old Jamie Vlassakis, a shy teenager who is taken under the wing of John Bunting, Australia’s most notorious serial killer.
Animal Kingdom is a gritty Australian crime film, based on Melbourne’s Pettingill crime family, about teenage Joshua “Jay” Cody, whose life disintegrates when he moves in with his estranged criminal family of four brothers and their mother after his mother overdoses on heroin.
The Boys is a disturbing crime drama set in Sydney about the Anita Cobby case and three criminal brothers, Brett, Stevie, and Glenn, whose toxic Australian masculinity, misogyny, and entitlement lead to chaos and a heinous crime after Brett is released from prison.
This film season was curated with the aim to inform true crime fans, cinephiles and Australians about historical events that took place, depicting the darker side of Australia’s criminal history.