Directed by Peter Weir (Australia, 1975, 115 min.).

This sensual and striking chronicle of a disappearance and its aftermath put director Peter Weir (Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show) on the map and helped usher in a new era of Australian cinema. Based on the acclaimed 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock is set at the turn of the 20th century and concerns a small group of students from a women’s college who vanish without a trace. Less a mystery than a journey into the mystic, as well as an inquiry into issues of class and sexual repression in Australian society, Weir’s gorgeous, disquieting film is a work of poetic horror whose secrets haunt viewers to this day.