About

On Valentine's Day in 1900, a party of schoolgirls go on a picnic at the base of Hanging Rock in Victoria's rugged Mount Macedon area. During the course of the afternoon three girls and their headmistress mysteriously go missing while exploring the rock. Seduced by the mysteries of the landscape, the ethereal young women vanish without a trace. Peter Weir's gothic drama quietly explores the resonances and repercussions of their disappearance: pubescent longing, Victorian-era female friendship, and the disconnection of the white colonial population from its adopted landscape. Based on the novel of the same title by Australian writer Joan Lindsay and shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Russell Boyd, Picnic at Hanging Rock contributed to the rebirth of the Australian film industry. Interestingly, two years after Lindsay's death in 1984, a concluding chapter from an unpublished draft of the novel was released, revealing the author's vision of the girls' fate, which was widely speculated on by audiences since the film's first release.