Dead Heart is a 1996

1996 in film

Major releases this year included Scream, Independence Day, Fargo, Trainspotting, The English Patient, Twister, Mars Attacks!, Jerry Maguire and a version of Evita starring Madonna.-Events:...

 Australian film. It was written and directed by Nick Parsons and starred Bryan Brown

Bryan Brown

Bryan Neathway Brown, AM is an Australian actor.-Early life:Brown was born in Sydney, the son of John Brown and Molly Brown, a house cleaner who worked as a pianist in the early days of the Langshaw School of Ballet. He grew up in the south-western Sydney suburb of Bankstown and began working at...

, Angie Milliken

Angie Milliken

-Career:Milliken first became noticed when she starred in the 1991 made-for-TV movie Act of Necessity for which she was nominated for an Australian Film Institute Award....

, Ernie Dingo

Ernie Dingo

Ernie Dingo AM is an Indigenous Australian actor and television presenter originating from the Yamatji people of the Murchison region of Western Australia.-Background:...

, Aaron Pedersen

Aaron Pedersen

Aaron Pedersen is an Australian television and film actor of Arrente/Arabana Australian Aboriginal descent.-Career:Prior to Aaron's acting career, Aaron plied his trade as a journalist with ABC2 at Elsternwick studios in Melbourne....

 and John Jarratt

John Jarratt

-Early life:Jarratt was born and grew up in Wongawilli, a small rural town near Wollongong, New South Wales and later in the Snowy Mountains area. Jarratt's father was a coal miner and later concreter, who worked on the Snowy Mountains hydroelectric scheme. Both his parents were of Irish origin....

.

The story is set in the isolated Outback

Outback

The Outback is the vast, remote, arid area of Australia, term colloquially can refer to any lands outside the main urban areas. The term "the outback" is generally used to refer to locations that are comparatively more remote than those areas named "the bush".-Overview:The outback is home to a...

, mainly Aboriginal town of Wala Wala, where an Aboriginal man is found dead in the local police lock up. The film explores the strained and complex relations between the people of the town in the aftermath, amidst growing tensions of forbidden love, sacrilege and murder. Bryan Brown plays the hardboiled local policeman and Ernie Dingo plays the idealistic local Aboriginal Christian pastor. Each of the characters is confronted with how to reconcile Aboriginal tradition with contemporary Australia.

Awards

The film gained three Australian Film Institute Awards

Australian Film Institute Awards

The Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Award, known as the AACTA Award , is an accolade presented annually by the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts . The awards recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry and television industry, including directors,...

 nominations: "Best Achievement in Sound", "Best Original Music Score" and "Best Screenplay, Adapted".

The film won the Film Critics Circle of Australia

Film Critics Circle of Australia

The Film Critics Circle of Australia is a group of cinema critics that judge Australian films.-External links:**...

Award for "Best Screenplay".