In late 1997, Anu Singh, an attractive law student in Canberra, made plans to kill her boyfriend Joe Cinque after throwing a series of macabre farewell dinner parties. The dinner guests, most of them university students, had heard various rumours about her plan, but nobody warned Joe. Joe's death and the subsequent trial drew the attention of the whole country, as the broader community struggled to come terms with how a life could fall through so many hands.
Joe Cinque’s Consolation is the dramatised screen adaptation of Helen Garner’s celebrated account of those events – a psychological crime drama that examines Joe and Anu’s relationship, the circumstances that led to tragedy, and the price of doing and saying nothing.
Sotiris Dounoukos and writer Matt Rubinstein draw on their own experience in the law, and Sotiris’ personal knowledge of his alma-mater and home town of Canberra during the late 90s, to piece together a vivid and disturbing study of a love that unravels, and a community of students that is tested.
