The Tree

The O'Neil family lives in the Australian countryside, where Dawn and Peter are raising their four children. When Peter dies suddenly in a car accident, the household is thrown into disarray, and each family member copes in a different way. Eight-year-old Simone refuses to accept that her father is gone. She becomes convinced that his spirit lives in the huge fig tree beside the house and that he speaks to her through its leaves. As the tree's branches and roots spread and threaten the family home, Dawn decides it has to be cut down, and Simone resists the decision.

The film is directed by Julie Bertuccelli, who wrote the screenplay with Elizabeth J. Mars. It was her first feature in the chronological list of her directing work, made with producers Alberto Fanni, Paolo Colombo and Sue Taylor and backed by a budget of about 9 million dollars. Charlotte Gainsbourg plays Dawn, with Morgan Davies as Simone, Marton Csokas as George Elrick, and Christian Byers, Tom Russell and Gabriel Gotting as the other children. The production involved companies and broadcasters from Germany, Australia, Italy and France.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.7 out of 10 from 22 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6.4 out of 10 from 121 votes. A critics' rating of 6.2 out of 10 from 67 reviews places professional assessments below the smaller IMDb sample and broadly in line with the larger audience score on TMDB.