The Rehearsal

Acting's hard work Stanley; you have to earn my respect.

– Hannah (Kerry Fox) to Stanley (James Rolleston)

You have probably heard things. That this first term is a physical and emotional undoing. That you will be forced to unlearn everything that you've ever learned; that you will break.

– Hannah (Kerry Fox) to her acting class

...a narratively teasing, structurally taut and emotionally textured adaptation of Man Booker award-winning author Eleanor Catton’s first novel, as writer/director Alison Maclean crafts a drama that’s as piercing as it is potent.

– Screen Daily critic Sarah Ward, 16 August 2016

...a tale of acting-class drama that's like Fame redone as a good movie ... [Kerry] Fox charges each encounter with a spark of disputatious energy — hectoring, cajoling, insulting. She’s like Stella Adler as an avant-garde cult leader.

– Variety critic Owen Gleiberman, 17 October 2016

It’s such a difficult thing to capture the fragility and bravado of young artists without either mocking them, on the one hand, or sentimentalising them, on the other, but I think the film achieved that delicate balance brilliantly.

– Eleanor Catton on the movie version of her novel, on The Rehearsal website