John Hillcoat

John Hillcoat won early acclaim when, as a student, he became the youngest ever filmmaker to be accepted into the Toronto Film Festival for his first short, The Finger.

His first feature film, Ghosts....of the Civil Dead was nominated for nine Australian Film Institute Awards. The film was in official competition at the Venice Film Festival and won Best Film at the Sans Sebastian Film Festival in 1988.

In 2005 he released The Proposition, a hard hitting Western-style feature set in the Australian outback and starring Ray Winstone, John Hurt and Emily Watson. It was nominated for eight Australian Film Institute Awards, including Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Film, and won Best Feature Film at the IF Awards that year.

John's fourth feature in 2009, The Road, is an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer prize winning novel and stars Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron.