2010 Australian film by David Michôd
Animal Kingdom is a 2010 Australian crime drama film written and directed by David Michôd in his feature directorial debut. It stars Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton, Guy Pearce, James Frecheville, Luke Ford, Jacki Weaver, and Sullivan Stapleton.
The screenplay was inspired by several crimes allegedly committed by the Pettingill family of Melbourne, particularly one involving brothers Trevor Pettingill and Victor Peirce, and two other men, Anthony Leigh Farrell and Peter David McEvoy, all of whom were acquitted in 1988 of murdering two police officers in the Walsh Street police shootings.
Animal Kingdom premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on 22 January 2010, where it won the World Cinema Jury Prize. The film was theatrically released on 3 June 2010 to highly positive reviews, with Mendelsohn and Weaver earning widespread acclaim for their performances. Weaver won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 83rd Academy Awards.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.