Disclosure (Feature Film)

Dandenong Ranges, Australia. Sunday. Australian documentary maker Emily, and her husband, journalist Danny, are reeling from an allegation of abuse their 4-year-old daughter Natasha has made against a local politician's 9-year-old son, Ethan. Ethan's parents, Joel and Bek, arrive unannounced at Emily and Danny's house intent on convincing the couple that Natasha's allegation is a fabrication. Emily suspects this is a gagging exercise and insists that she is going to seek professional help for Natasha, knowing that this will trigger a mandatory report to the police. Faced with the prospect of a police investigation, Joel and his wife Bek go on the offensive. What begins as an amicable conversation soon degenerates into arguments centring around a lack of evidence, and the unreliability of the stories told by 4-year-olds. When ulterior motives are exposed, the conflict turns to blackmail, threats of social exile and physical violence. Disclosure is a tense dialogue-driven psychological drama, inspired by real events. At a time when the #MeToo campaign is capturing the public zeitgeist, Disclosure expands the conversation to tackle the major issue of child-on-child sexual abuse, its links with the availability of hard-core pornography on the internet, and the seriously inadequate institutional responses to this escalating problem in Victoria and beyond. The alarming scale of child-on-child abuse has been highlighted by a slew of academic papers (Briggs, 2017; Cook, 2015; Trounson, 2017; Wright, 2015). The recent Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was inundated with submissions around this issue. Disclosure contributes to the discourse around social change in line with the listed published recommendations, by taking the conversation around child-on-child abuse firmly into the public domain and onto the political agenda. The screenplay for Disclosure won the prestigious Margaret Lawrence Social Justice Award in 2017. The film has its World Premiere, Palm Springs International Film Festival, USA (2020), followed by screening In competition, Gold Coast Film Festival, Australia (2020), Adelaide Film Festival (2021), Newport Beach Film Festival, USA (2020). It was nominated for Best Independent Feature Film, AACTA Awards (2021) and the Winner of the Best Fiction Feature Film, ATOM Awards (2021). Disclosure is distributed in North America by Breaking Glass Pictures, USA and in Australia by Bonsai Films.