Broken Hill is a 2009 drama film

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

 directed and written by Dagen Merrill and starring Alexa Vega

Alexa Vega

Alexa Ellesse Vega is an American actress, singer and pianist. She is best known for playing Carmen Cortez in the Spy Kids film series and Shilo Wallace in the movie Repo! the Genetic Opera. In 2009, she starred as the title character Ruby Gallagher in the ABC Family series Ruby & The...

 and Timothy Hutton

Timothy Hutton

Timothy Tarquin Hutton is an American actor. He is the youngest actor to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, which he won at the age of 20 for his performance as Conrad Jarrett in Ordinary People . He currently stars as Nathan "Nate" Ford on the TNT series Leverage.-Early life:Timothy...

.

Plot

A gifted teenage composer (Tommy), dreams of being accepted into the famous Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Unfortunately, a good band is hard to find in the middle of Outback Australia - until a strange incident involving flying watermelons leads him to a group of talented prison inmates.

Release

June announcement: "Broken Hill will launch in the first week of September in Broken Hill and will be in approximately 300 venues around Australia during September... After extensive negotiations, Broken Hill has been selected as the inaugural film for a major new national educational initiative in Australia aimed at schools, families and communities. The details of the initiative have not been made public yet, the formal announcement will happen July 23 in Sydney, so we will hold further details until then. But count on September... A major video distributor will be releasing Broken Hill on DVD in the USA in October 2010, along with a number of national US television appointments, and distribution deals in other international markets ramping up too. The DVD will be released in Australia to coincide with the theatrical release."

Eone Entertainment has announced that the US home video version of the film will be released on May 17th, 2011.

Cast

• Alexa Vega
  Alexa Vega
  Alexa Ellesse Vega is an American actress, singer and pianist. She is best known for playing Carmen Cortez in the Spy Kids film series and Shilo Wallace in the movie Repo! the Genetic Opera. In 2009, she starred as the title character Ruby Gallagher in the ABC Family series Ruby & The...
  
   as Kat Rogers
• Timothy Hutton
  Timothy Hutton
  Timothy Tarquin Hutton is an American actor. He is the youngest actor to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, which he won at the age of 20 for his performance as Conrad Jarrett in Ordinary People . He currently stars as Nathan "Nate" Ford on the TNT series Leverage.-Early life:Timothy...
  
   as George McAlpine
• Rhys Wakefield
  Rhys Wakefield
  Rhys Wakefield is an Australian actor. He is best known for portraying the main character Thomas in the 2008 film The Black Balloon., for the 2011 film Sanctum, and portraying Lucas Holden in the long-running TV series Home and Away.-Biography:Before appearing as Lucas in Home and Away, Wakefield...
  
   as Scott Price
• Andy McPhee as Bear
• Luke Arnold as Tommy, a teenager gifted composer
• The Fishbowl Boys as themselves
• Klayton Stainer as Watermelon Thief

Reception

Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel

Orlando Sentinel

The Orlando Sentinel is the primary newspaper of the Orlando, Florida region. It was founded in 1876. The Sentinel is owned by Tribune Company and is overseen by the Chicago Tribune. As of 2005, the Sentinel’s president and publisher was Kathleen Waltz; she announced her resignation in February 2008...

 found the sight of the lead character conducting an imaginary orchestra a little challenging, and gave the movie 2 stars (out of five).

Cary Darling of the Dallas Morning News objected to the "hardened" prisoners seeming as threatening "as Hogan's Heroes

Hogan's Heroes

Hogan's Heroes is an American television sitcom that ran for 168 episodes from September 17, 1965, to March 28, 1971, on the CBS network. The show was set in a German prisoner of war camp during the Second World War. Bob Crane had the starring role as Colonel Robert E...

", but gave the film 3½ stars out of five.

Jeff Vice of the Deseret News praises the "gorgeous Australian settings" and the cast of "mostly fresh-faced actors," sums it up as an "entertaining feel-good tale", before awarding the film 2½ stars out of four.

Awards

Broken Hill took out the ‘Best Feature Film - Audience Choice’ Award at the TriMedia Film Festival held in Fort Collins, Colorado (USA) and won a Best Film award at the Giffoni Film Festival

Giffoni Film Festival

The Giffoni International Film Festival is the largest children’s film festival in Europe, and possibly the World. It takes place in the little Italian town of Giffoni Valle Piana in Southern Italy, close to Salerno. Over 2,000 children attend the festival from 39 countries around the world...

 in Italy. The Giffoni Film Festival website describes Broken Hill as "halfway between Sister Act

Sister Act

Sister Act is a 1992 American comedy film released by Touchstone Pictures. Directed by Emile Ardolino, it features musical arrangements by Marc Shaiman and stars Whoopi Goldberg as a Reno lounge singer who has been put under protective custody in a San Francisco convent and has to pretend to be a...

 and the Italian movie La musica nel Cuore.

The 2010 International Family Film Festival awarded Broken Hill the “Director’s Gold Spirit Award”, the top jury prize awarded by the Festival.

External links

• Broken Hill - The trailer