Black And White

Based on a true story, Black And White is a highly compelling film based on a 1959 landmark trial that irrevocably changed police procedure and judicial authority in South Australia.

It's Christmas in conservative Adelaide, a city that prides itself on its peaceful, well-bred qualities. An inexperienced but passionate young lawyer, David O'Sullivan (Robert Carlyle), is given news that he has drawn a 'bad lottery prize' - a legal aid case defending a young Aboriginal man called Max Stuart (David Ngoombujarra).

Max has been arrested for the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl in the far-west town of Ceduna. O'Sullivan soon concludes that Max has been framed by the local police, accusing them of beating a false confession out of the young Aborigine. He decides to take a stand, and stop Max from being hanged for a crime O'Sullivan strongly believes Max did not commit.

O'Sullivan finds himself pitted against South Australia's Crown Prosecutor Roderic Chamberlain QC (Gosford Park's Charles Dance), a forbidding but charismatic character. Thereafter, O'Sullivan and his legal partner Helen Devaney (New Zealand actress Kerry Fox), embark on a 'David and Goliath' battle that threatens the establishment and the world of closed ranks and hidden evidence.

Aided by a young Rupert Murdoch (Ben Mendelsohn) who is fast making a name for himself in newspaper publishing with the Adelaide News, and Father Tom Dixon (Colin Friels), O'Sullivan takes the case to the highest courts in the Commonwealth in a bid to seek justice. But it's a hard slog to defend a man who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.