Legendary Aussie rock band Midnight Oil are getting their place in film posterity with a new documentary that charts their entire, epochal, 45 year career.
How to watch Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line in Australia
Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line is the opening night film at this year’s Sydney Film Festival on June 6, before getting a nation-wide theatrical release on July 4.
Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line
What is Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line about?
Written and directed by Paul Clarke (Between a Frock & a Hard Place, Whitlam: the Power and the Passion), Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line is an exhaustive look at the Oils’ entire history, from their formative years in the early ’70s under the name Farm to their meteoric rise in the ’80s, through to their 2022 farewell tour, encompassing along the way both their music and their defiant progressive political activism (let us not forget, frontman Peter Garrett was a politician for a minute there, serving as Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts in Kevin Rudd’s cabinet). Clarke and his team followed the band for seven years, and it’s a safe bet the usual reams of archival material to have been made available, so this promises to be a definitive screen account of one of Australia’s most important bands.
The cast of Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line
Well, Midnight Oil, of course, with final line up Peter Garrett, Jim Moginie, Martin Rotsey, and Rob Hirst confirmed to be on board. Whether any former members showed up for new interviews is unknown, but expect appearances in archive footage, at least. The great and the good will probably contribute reverent talking head spots—it feels like that sort of thing.
Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line trailer
Why we’re excited about Midnight Oil: The Hardest Line
Midnight Oil were a kick-ass band who refused to observe any boundary between art and politics, so this exhaustive overview is mandatory viewing as far as we’re concerned.
