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Matthew Newton film From Nowhere receives audience award at Austin’s SXSW

From Nowhere.

Matthew Newton's latest film as a director, his first since Three Blind Mice in 2008, has won an audience award at Austin's annual SXSW festival.

Three Blind Mice starred Ewen Leslie, Toby Schmitz and Newton himself as buddies on a night out in Sydney. 

By contrast From Nowhere takes place in a Bronx high school and stars relatively unknown actors. 

Julianne Nicholson, J. Mallory McCree and Octavia Chavez-Richmond play students about to graduate who are also undocumented immigrants.

A clip from the film can be watched here.

The hot-button feature was praised by Variety's Joe Leydon as a "compelling indie drama".

"Arriving in the middle of an election season when debates over U.S. immigration policy have devolved into sloganeering and shouting matches, “From Nowhere” feels all the more urgent and relevant as it applies human faces to abstract statistics and arguments", Leydon said.

"Writer-director Matthew Newton neatly avoids predictability and melodramatic excess in focusing on three undocumented teenagers nearing graduation at a Bronx high school, effectively using the specifics of their individual situations to illustrate opportunities and obstacles in the path of anyone pursuing the American Dream while hiding in plain sight". 

Newton co-wrote the script with Kate Ballen, who wrote the play on which the film is based. 

An Australian release is anybody's guess, given the film's scale and the multiple charges for assault which led to Newton decamping to the States in 2011.

Newton's career as an actor has largely flatlined since, with the only role on his dance card that of 'Russian arms dealer' in Croatian director Jakov Sedlar's Wasn't Afraid to Die, currently in post.

The full list of SXSW audience award winners can be found here.