Cate Blanchett as Susan Macarthy and Japanese internment camp vocal orchestra

Paradise Road (1997) directed by Bruce Beresford

Bruce Beresford’s Paradise Road tells the story of a group of women held captive in a Japanese internment camp during the Second World War. When they form a choir, the music they make redeems the brutal conditions, scarce food and cruel punishments they endure. Fox was reluctant to cast the then relatively unknown Cate Blanchett in the role of Nurse Susan Macarthy, but Beresford insisted. A shy nurse who finds her voice while in the camp, she is pictured here singing at the choir’s first performance. Beresford remembered feeling compelled to make a film about the women’s ‘heroism, resourcefulness, creating this choir with extraordinary music, creating beauty out of these surroundings’.