Jonathan auf der Heide won the Best Emerging Filmmaker award at the 2008 Melbourne International Film Festival, and his debut feature Van Diemen’s Land was released the following year. He’s currently directing his segment of the compendium feature adaptation of Tim Winton’s The Turning and co-writing his next feature, This Dark Wood (also set in Tasmania) with Tom Holloway – which has received second draft funding from Screen Tasmania.
I first heard the story of escaped convict Alexander Pearce when I was a teenager on the tour boat to Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour. I’d been working with a theatre company in Strahan as an actor and it was...
