Rising Australian actress Odessa Young is about to make a splash in Thordur Palsson’s feature directorial debut, The Damned, and the newly released trailer is proof of that.
The Damned is a horror film set in the 19th century, revolving around the inhabitants of a remote fishing outpost who witness a shipwreck. Young plays Eva, a woman in the community who faces an impossible task: rescuing the shipwrecked people at the risk of running out of provisions, leading to total starvation. Sounds promising, doesn’t it?
The film premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival before being shown around the world at festivals like Cannes. Those lucky enough to have seen it are praising the sheer anxiety and dread the film induces. Thordur Palsson entered as a director with guns blazing, and he did not disappoint.
Odessa had two movies premiere this year. The first, My First Film, marked Zia Anger’s directorial debut and premiered at CPH:DOX before hitting cinemas in August to much acclaim. The second was The Order, starring Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and competed for the Golden Lion and is set for a release on December 6, 2024.
Young was cast in the role of Eva back in 2021, and it took around two years before filming began. However, the shoot itself wrapped a few months later, with the project then moving into post-production. Now, a year later, we have a trailer, and the film is set to arrive in cinemas on January 3. Seriously, 2025 can’t come soon enough!