The Royal Hotel director Kitty Green on threat of male violence: ‘Unfortunately, it’s just universal’

Australian director Kitty Green is quickly building a reputation for her impressive filmmaking around gender dynamics and male power.

Video transcript

- In terms of the current climate with not saying anything revolutionary here, but male violence towards women and casual aggression towards women is nothing new. But with figures like Andrew Tate and Laurence Fox, people off the top of my head, who are very current at the minute and very present. Was there something timely to this as well in this or is this just a film what you've always wanted to make?

KITTY GREEN: Unfortunately, I don't think it's just today probably, you know what I mean? It's been-- it's sort of about behavior that's been going on for forever essentially. Because, yeah, it's not really looking at-- it's funny, like people are very quick to label it as Australian and a particularly Australian thing. And I think it's a behavior-- that anything that happens in that pub could happen in any pub or bar anywhere in the world.

People have had a little too much to drink and everything's getting a little shaky and it could easily escalate. So yeah. I think, yeah, unfortunately it's universal. And unfortunately, I mean, hopefully it's not timeless. Hopefully we can find a way to stand up for ourselves before then.

I'm not sure like go into it with an agenda. I'm just like a woman in the world. And so it's sort of about my own fears and my own worries. And it just naturally ends up being something. And then people label it as that. And I'm trying to make sense of it myself. But yeah, it just comes from a very like a gut thing, like it's oh, I find this interesting about our culture or this interesting about this. And sort of build a screenplay on that really.