{"id":851671,"date":"2026-08-11T17:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/851671\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T17:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:36:09","slug":"leviticus-director-adrian-chiarella-signs-with-anonymous-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/851671\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Leviticus’ Director Adrian Chiarella Signs With Anonymous Content"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAnonymous Content<\/a> has signed Melbourne-based writer-director Adrian Chiarella<\/a> for representation, beating out several other companies that had been courting him.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe move comes on the heels of Chiarella\u2019s feature directorial debut, \u201cLeviticus<\/a>,\u201d a queer horror film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year to strong critical response. The story centers on two teenage boys whose romance turns fatal after a violent conversion therapy ritual, after which they find themselves hunted by a malevolent presence that appears to each of them in the shape of the other.<\/p>\n

\n\tReviewing the film for Variety<\/a>, Carlos Aguilar described \u201cLeviticus\u201d as \u201ca tightly conceived, gripping queer horror that reaches for unassuming brilliance through a supernatural premise that\u2019s as terrifying as it is thematically relevant,\u201d and wrote \u201cthis outstanding debut from writer-director Adrian Chiarella organically marries blood-curling fright with incisive social commentary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCauseway Films produced \u201cLeviticus,\u201d and Neon picked up the buzzy title<\/a> in a seven-figure deal. From there it traveled to further festival dates at SXSW and in Sydney before opening theatrically. The cast includes Joe Bird, Stacy Clausen Jeremy Blewitt and Ewen Leslie.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019d noticed there was this shift in the air in the last five or 10 years, at least in Australia, of a regression of a lot of the rights LGBTQIA+ people had fought so hard for,\u201d Chiarella told Variety <\/a>about the film. \u201cParticularly in the language we were hearing in our political sphere, and also microaggressions in day-to-day life. I wanted to make a film about that, but I didn\u2019t want to go backwards as a filmmaker. I wanted to do something a little bit newer and a bit more personal. So I thought about the kinds of films that I watched at that time in my life when I was going through experiences similar to the ones in this film. They were horror movies, basically. And I think, like a lot of young queer people, I turned to that genre because of the way it explored otherness and that destabilizing feeling some of us have on our journey to self-discovery. So I brought the two things together, and I realized, \u2018Horror is the genre of fear.\u2019 It\u2019s where we ask the audience, \u2018What are you really scared of?\u2019 And that felt like the right space to explore homophobia in all its different shades.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChiarella has built a reputation as one of Australia\u2019s most closely watched emerging filmmakers, earning recognition for storytelling seen as emotionally resonant and for a genre-bending approach to horror.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis television credits include \u201cTotally Completely Fine\u201d for Sundance Now, \u201cErotic Stories\u201d for SBS and \u201cFive Bedrooms\u201d for Paramount+.<\/p>\n

\n\tChiarella remains represented by WME, Jeff Hynick at Jackoway Austen Tyerman and Joel Petterson at Cameron\u2019s Management in Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anonymous Content has signed Melbourne-based writer-director Adrian Chiarella for representation, beating out several other companies that had been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[258657,128722,64,63,134,227279,344],"class_list":["post-851671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-adrian-chiarella","tag-anonymous-content","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-leviticus","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851671\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}