The Survival of Kindness

The Survival of Kindness is a 2022 Australian drama film written, produced and directed by Rolf de Heer. It had its world premiere at Adelaide Film Festival on 23 October 2022, and its international premiere in competition at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival on 17 February 2023, where it competed for Golden Bear and won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Film.

Premise
An allegory for racism, the film follows BlackWoman, who is abandoned in a cage on a trailer in the middle of the desert. Her escape leads to a city, recapture and tragedy.

Cast

 * Mwajemi Hussein (BlackWoman)
 * Deepthi Sharma (BrownGirl)
 * Darsan Sharma (BrownBoy)
 * Gary Waddell
 * Natasha Wanganeen

Production
The film is produced by Julie Byrne and Rolf de Heer under the banner of Triptych Pictures and Vertigo Productions, and bankrolled by Screen Australia, Screen Tasmania, Adelaide Film Festival, and South Australian Film Corporation. Umbrella Entertainment is taking care of distribution in Australia. Elise Archer, Minister for the Arts, Tasmania, wrote on her website, "We have invested $90,000 in the film (The Survival of Kindness), through Screen Tasmania, which was filmed in both Tasmania and South Australia.

Release
The Survival of Kindness had its world premiere at Adelaide Film Festival on 23 October 2022.

It had its international premiere in competition at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival on 17 February 2023, where it competed for Golden Bear and won the FIPRESCI Award for Best Film.

The film was selected in country focus section 'Best of Contemporary Australian Cinema' at the 29th Kolkata International Film Festival and will be screened on 6 December 2023.

Reception
On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes website, the film has an approval rating of 83% based on 18 reviews, with an average rating of 7.3/10. On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 66 out of 100 based on 6 reviews, indicating "Generally Favorable Reviews".

David Rooney, reviewing for The Hollywood Reporter at Berlin Film Festival, praised the performance of Mwajemi Hussein, writing, "Hussein’s unflinching performance speaks volumes, mostly without words". Rooney found the film rather too lengthy: "there’s a grim inevitability to The Survival of Kindness that becomes wearing, making its 96 minutes feel longer." Calling it a outback gothic, he stated, "Some will find it immersive and others distancing; many will find it unrelentingly bleak, even infuriating in its ability to be simultaneously opaque and obvious." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian rated the film with 3 stars out of 5 and wrote, "It is an elegant reverie about the violence and the stoicism beneath the surface of ordinary life." Wendy Ide for ScreenDaily wrote that the filmmaking is "striking, thought-provoking, although it rather runs out of steam and ideas in the third act." Pat Brown for Slant Magazine rated 2.5 out of 4 and praised Hussein as "magnetic as BlackWoman". Brown opined, "An epic adventure in the guise of an arthouse flick, The Survival of Kindness makes up in visual power and moral clarity what it lacks in subtext."