Louis Nowra

Stories of the bizarre and the supernatural, as introduced by Bryan Brown. Sometimes serious, often comical, but always with a twist at the end of the story.

When Russia's first nuclear submarine malfunctions on its maiden voyage, the crew must race to save the ship and prevent a nuclear disaster.

Marcy, a worker in the reelection campaign of bumbling Senator John McGlory, is sent to Ireland on a quest to find the Irish ancestry of Sen. McGlory, to help him win the Irish vote. But when Marcy arrives in the small village of Ballinagra, she finds herself in the middle of a matchmaking festival, and the local matchmaker is determined to pair her off with one of the local bachelors.

Lewis, a young amateur theater director, is offered a job with a governmental program for the rehabilitation of mentally ill patients in a Sydney institution. His project is overrun by one of the patients, who wants to stage the opera Cosi Fan Tutte by Mozart, despite the fact that none of the patients can sing or speak Italian. A comedy of errors ensues, but one which unifies the patients and their director in unexpected ways.

In an Arctic village in 1931, British mapmaker Walter Russell selects 12-year-old Eskimo Avik as his guide. When the boy contracts tuberculosis, Walter flies him to a Montreal hospital, where Avik meets Albertine and is infatuated. A decade later, a grown Avik encounters Albertine again in London, where he's serving as a British combat pilot. Despite her relationship with Walter, she and Avik begin an affair.

In 1860s New Zealand, a young Irish woman desperately trying to find her son finds herself caught on both sides of the lines during the wars between Māori tribes and the British colonial army.

In Sydney, the newly married Midori is honeymooning with her husband, Yukio. She does not love him and fakes her own kidnapping to escape the marriage. Her lover is supposed to meet her, but fails to appear. She goes to a bank to get some cash, only to become a hostage in an unfolding robbery, until the getaway driver, Colin, saves her from his fellow robbers. They hit the road together, with the cops, her husband and the robbers in pursuit.

Australia, 1958. When a nine year old white girl is found murdered, police are quick to arrest illiterate Aborigine, Max Stuart. Under interrogation Max admits to the killing. With a legal system compromised by intimidation tactics, the skills of his two gifted but naïve defense lawyers are put to the test.

Two schizophrenics meet during therapy and fall in love. Unfortunately they are on a road to nowhere...

Four unsuspecting victims find themselves beyond "The Twilight Zone" in a twisted and altered reality: an airline passenger thinks he's lost his identity... a bored housewife thinks she's found romance... a conman thinks he's made his mark... and a hired killer thinks she's ready to retire. Unfortunately for all of them, they soon discover that there's nothing like reality to get in the way of an otherwise perfectly twisted perspective. Things are never quite that simple.

In Rain of the Children, Ward further explores the subject of his earlier film, In Spring One Plants Alone when, as a young film student he travelled to the Ureweras and documented the lives of an elderly Māori woman (Puhi) and her schizophrenic son (Niki).

A beautiful, if ambitious and amoral, youth is tapped to become the lover of a powerful senator. The young man quickly realizes that he can hold this place, with all its perks, only as long as he is young. He has no other function than being young. With the help of an aged judge, the young man, referred to only as The Lover, contrives a plan to make a change in the way of the world, a plan that will take him years to realize. To succeed, he must manipulate, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the senator, his wife, the family chauffeur (who was, when young, a lover), and, by implication, the entire well-planned and controlling everlasting secret family.

When eldest sister Cressy, middle daughter Mae and the young Nona are reunited for the first time in years it doesn’t take long for the sparks to fly. Painful memories and secrets are revealed and put into a life-changing perspective in one unforgettable night.

A woman travels from France to Australia in search of her missing son.