As you settle in at the movies this weekend with your popcorn and choc-top, adjusting the seat back and getting ready to watch Marvel's new blockbuster, Black Widow, just remember its director grew up in Canberra.
Cate Shortland has found herself to be a trailblazer as the first woman to solo direct a Marvel Studios film, in the gritty, high-action Black Widow, starring Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh.
Shortland, 52, grew up in Duffy and lived in Canberra until she moved up the Hume Highway to study directing at Sydney University when she was 20. She had attended Holder High and Stirling College.
And it was in Canberra, particularly at Stirling College, that her talent for film-making emerged.
''At school I was hopeless at maths but I really enjoyed English, history and art. I was allowed to focus on those subjects and study what I was passionate about," she told The Canberra Times in 2004.
She graduated in 1991 and went on to the Australian Film, Television and Radio School where she received the Southern Star Award for Most Promising Student upon graduating in 2000. Eight months later, she was the first director on the television series The Secret Life of Us.
Shortland first came to prominence in 2004 when her debut feature film Somersault was released.
Featuring then stars-on-the-rise Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington, Somersault was filmed in Narrabundah and around Lake Jindabyne. It won 13 Australian Film Institute (AFI) awards and was included in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival.
"I remember going for walks with the dog and seeing the snow on the Brindabellas, and the gorgeous Monaro plains, it matched the feel of what we wanted to capture in the film," she said at Somersault's Canberra premiere in 2004.
Somersault showed Shortland's talent for revealing the grittiness and uncomfortable truths now on display in the genuine, worldwide blockbuster that is Black Widow. The film's takings are reported to be more than $200 million, through the box office and on Disney Plus.
