The Royal Hotel

Two friends backpacking through Australia find themselves short on cash, so they take temporary jobs behind the bar of a pub called The Royal Hotel, located in a small, remote mining town in the outback. Hanna and Liv soon discover that the bar's owner, Billy, and the local men treat the arrival of young female staff as an everyday occurrence, and the heavy drinking culture around them steadily makes the pair uncomfortable. What begins as a working holiday turns into an unsettling situation that moves beyond their control.

This is the third feature directed by Kitty Green, following Casting JonBenet in 2017 and The Assistant in 2020, and she wrote the screenplay with Oscar Redding. Julia Garner plays Hanna and Jessica Henwick plays Liv, with Hugo Weaving as Billy, Daniel Henshall as Dolly, Toby Wallace as Matty and Ursula Yovich as Carol. The production, made across Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, credits 22 cast members and 49 crew.

Released in October 2023 and running 91 minutes, the film drew a critics' rating of 7.1/10 from around 150 reviews, while audiences were less favourable: it holds 5.7/10 on IMDb from roughly 17,000 votes and 5.4/10 on TMDB from a few hundred votes. Its worldwide box office reached about 1 million USD, a modest return for a drama-thriller of this scale.