Australian composer Warren Ellis takes us through a personal tour of music, addiction, rehabilitation and animal conservatism in this inspiring and seamless blend of music biography and environmental advocacy.
Ellis Park 2024
Warren Ellis is known to many as one of Australia’s most unique and influential musicians. Longtime collaborator of Nick Cave, a member of The Dirty Three and soundtrack composer in his own right, Ellis is also the owner of Ellis Park, a wildlife sanctuary in Indonesia that shelters and nurses wounded wild animals back to health until they are ready to be released back into the wild.
Through filmed performances and candid interviews, we see Ellis’s creative process and learn of his past struggles with addiction and his later recovery. We also see the lives of the employees and the animals at Ellis Park making the film an engaging combination of musical and animal conservation documentaries. Australian director Justin Kurzel (The True Story of the Kelly Gang, NZIFF 2020) brings these two halves together seamlessly and they become an exploration on the duality of humanity. Powered by a melancholic soundtrack composed by Ellis himself, Ellis Park shows that the suffering of animals is mostly caused by humanity’s greed and desire for capitalistic gain while their path to recovery is propelled by human kindness and generosity. — Jordan Salomen