''Pawno'' is a 2016 Australian

romantic comedy Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a subgenre of comedy and slice of life fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles. In a typica ...

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-g ...

set in the diverse and multicultural Melbourne suburb of Footscray. It was released in cinemas around Australia on 21 April 2016 by Mind Blowing World. The film was directed by Paul Ireland from a script by

Damian Hill Damian Hill (~19762018) was an Australian film and television actor, and screenwriter. He was the writer of and an actor in '' Pawno'' for which he received two 2016 AACTA Award nominations, Best Actor in a Leading Role and Best Original Screenpl ...

. The two co-produced their debut feature film through their production company, Toothless Pictures. It stars

John Brumpton John Brumpton (born 28 July 1958) is an Australian actor who has appeared in a large number of local productions. Early life Brumpton grew up in Sydney. He graduated from the University of New South Wales in 1982 with a Bachelor of Surve ...

Kerry Armstrong Kerry Michelle Armstrong (born 12 September 1958) is an Australian actress and author. She is one of only two actresses to win two Australian Film Institute Awards in the same year, winning Best Actress in a Leading Role for ''Lantana'' and B ...

Maeve Dermody Maeve Dermody ( ; born 2 November 1985) is a UK-based Australian actress. After a film appearance at 5 years old, her adult acting career has included work in Australian and British television, theatre, short films, and movies. She characterises ...

, Damian Hill,

Mark Coles Smith Mark Coles Smith (born 1989) is an Indigenous Australian actor originally from Broome in Western Australia. He is known for his roles in '' Last Cab to Darwin'' (2015), '' Picnic at Hanging Rock'' (2018) and '' Occupation: Rainfall'' (2020), a ...

and Malcolm Kennard. The film premiered to critical success, and was the fastest-selling Australian film at the

Melbourne International Film Festival The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) is an annual film festival held over three weeks in Melbourne, Australia. It was founded in 1952 and is one of the oldest film festivals in the world following the founding of the Venice Film Fest ...

2015, finishing in the top 10 for the MIFF Audience Award. Film critic

David Stratton David James Stratton (born 10 September 1939) is an English-Australian award-winning film critic, as both a journalist and interviewer, film historian and lecturer and television personality and producer. Life and career Born in Trowbridge, ...

, formerly of '' At the Movies'', gave ''Pawno'' four stars in ''

The Australian ''The Australian'', with its Saturday edition, ''The Weekend Australian'', is a broadsheet newspaper published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964.Bruns, Axel. "3.1. The active audience: Transforming journalism from gatekeeping to gatew ...

''.

Plot synopsis

''Pawno'' is set in the multicultural suburb of Footscray, Victoria. A character-driven story, ''Pawno'' examines the intersecting lives of 14 local characters and their resident

pawnbroker A pawnbroker is an individual or business (pawnshop or pawn shop) that offers secured loans to people, with items of personal property used as collateral. The items having been ''pawned'' to the broker are themselves called ''pledges'' or ...

Cast

as Les Underwood *

as Kate *

as Danny Williams *

Malcolm Kennard Malcolm Bruce Kennard (born in 1967) is an Australian born actor of theatre, film and television. He has appeared in a wide variety of roles in Australia, from soap opera to mini-series and made for television films and also in US productions. ...

as Carlo *

as Pauly *

as Jennifer Montgomery * Tony Rickards as Harry * Daniel Frederiksen as Paige Turner * Brad McMurray as Jason Spears

Production

The film was independently funded through a

crowd-funding Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over was raised worldwide by crow ...

campaign, and was shortlisted for the $100,000 CinefestOz Film Prize.

Reception

''Pawno'' holds a 75% approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

. Russell Marks in ''The Monthly'' gave the film a scathing review. "Australian cinema regularly produces better, funnier, more perceptive content than Pawno. The film's real quality is in its capacity to market both its multiculturalism and its localism, while reflecting a nostalgia among its audience for a mythic monoculture. Only about half the audience at the screening I was at were laughing, and a couple walked out partway through. I wanted to, but I also wanted to write about it."

Accolades

External links

*
Pawno
' on

Internet Movie Database IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

*
Pawno
' on

References

{{Use dmy dates, date=June 2019 Australian drama films