“I was visiting film sets from an early age and I was always fascinated (and intimidated) by the sets, the camera, the huge number of people working together “
Adelaide-born-and-educated Fiona Crombie, nominated for Best Production Design Oscars for The Favourite (2018) and Hamnet (2025), emerged from a mesh of South Australian film links.
A student from Adelaide’s Pembroke School, she is the daughter of Judith and Donald Crombie, both Australian film luminaries. As Fiona recalled: “I was visiting film sets from an early age and I was always fascinated (and intimidated) by the sets, the camera, the huge number of people working together ”.
The Crombies came to Adelaide when Donald Crombie was appointed one of the early directors to the new South Australian Film Corporation. He went on to gain renown with screen credits including Caddie and Cathy’s Child plus television’s McLeod’s Daughters. Judith Crombie, named among Australia’s cinema pioneers, became chief executive of the South Australia Film Corporation.
Fiona was also a close associate of another Pembroke student and rising giant of Australian cinema: director, Justin Kurzel.
Kurzel had grown up in Gawler where he was first inspired to make films by seeing the South Australian Film Corporation’s Playing Beatie Bow directed by David Crombie. Kurzel’s close links with Fiona and her family would have later blooming effects. Crombie graduated from NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art) in production design in 1998 and worked for 10 years as a set and costume designer in theatre. Her crossover to film came through Justin Kurzel, also working in theatre, but also directing music promos, short films and TV commercials.
From working with Kurzel on those ventures, Fiona had the “amazing launch pad” of doing the production and come costume design on his first feature film: Snowtown. With a tiny crew of close friends ,“we made an original and uncompromising film”. She then moved on to other film projects and to experience the ethos of Jane Campion with the TV thriller series Top of the Lake.
Another Kuzel film, Macbeth, brought Crombie to the United Kingdom: “Justin Kurzel and I had to bend the design to fit the budget. We had to loosen up and create a world that felt authentic, immersive and believable but was entirely anachronistic.”
The Macbeth theatre-based process informed how Crombie approached all her later period work including The Favourite where she had the confidence to follow her instincts. The Favourite, a dark satire set in the court of England’s Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) premiered to critical acclaim at the 75th Venice Film Festival, taking home the coveted Grand Jury Prize and dominating the British Independent Film Awards, winning a record 10 awards including Best Production Design for Crombie and Alice Felton.
It also won the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) Production Design award.
Crombie followed up by being nominated for an Academy Best Production Design award with another for Chloe Zhao’s award-winning film Hamnet. Crombie visited “countless’” Tudor interiors, amassing a “camera roll full of details”.
Donald Crombie inspires daughter Fiona and Justin Kurzel’s careers
Images courtesy Anthony Buckley for National Film and Sound Archive; Umbrella Entertainment.
Playing Beatie Bow, a 1985 fantasy drama produced by the South Australian Film Corporation and mostly made in Adelaide, was part of the oeuvre of director Donald Crombie, father of Oscar-nominated production designer Fiona Crombie and a mentor for South Australia director Justin Kurzel.
A Queensland-born graduate of NIDA (National Institute of Dramatic Art), Donald Crombie joined the South Australian Fim Corporation after working for the Commonwealth Film Unit (later Screen Australia) from 1963. As one of the South Australian corporation’s first drama directors, Crombie was credited with helping to shape the cultural identity of the state’s film industry.
Appointed in 2017 as a member of the Order of Australia (AM), Crombie’s best work as director, writer and producer in film and television, featuring strong central female characters, included Who Killed Jenny Langby (1974), Caddie (1976), Do I Have to Kill My Child? (1976), Cathy’s Child (1979), and The Killing of Angel Street (1981).
But it was Playing Beatie Bow that had a profound effect on the young Justin Kurzel, later a director of films such as Snowtown, Macbeth, True History of the Kelly Gang, Nitram and The Order. Growing up the the South Australian town of Gawler, Kurzel vividly remembered seeing a 35-millimetre print of Playing Beatie Bow and the “alluring performance” by Imogen Annesley. “I felt an irresistible pull towards wanting to be a part of it. But it seemed like an elusive dream.”
That changed when he moved to Adelaide and formed a deep friendship with Fiona, Crombie’s daughter, at Pembroke School. Fiona was one of the four children of Crombie and his wife Judith, later a chief executive of the South Australia Film Corporation. Kurzel was “in awe” of meeting Donald Crombie, who invited him to the set of his TV series River Kings, set in the era of steam paddleboats on the Murray River: “It was there I witnessed his extraordinary work ethic. He exuded a gentle yet laser-focused presence on set.”
South Australia’s Justin Kurzel won the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Awards (AACTA) best director for The Narrow Road to The Deep North. The television series, based on Richard Flanagan’s Booker Prize novel, reflected the regard that Kurzel garnered from his early feature films Snowtown (2011), The True History of the Kelly Gang (2018) and Nitram (2021).
Australian actor Jacob Elordi who won the AACTA best actor award in The Narrow Road to The Deep North and had risen to world attention with roles in Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights said he was happily lured back to Australia to make The Narrow Road to The Deep North because “I watched Snowtown when I was probably 14 or 15, and it was like a cinematic awakening. I realised that it is the thing that I want to be a part of, and those are the kinds of movies that I want to make.”
Elordi was drawn to Kurzel’s distinctive directorial style and power as a filmmaker: “It’s an undeniable honesty”. After working on Hollywood film sets, Elordi also appreciated the lack of pretension that characterised Kurzel’s filmmaking.
Richard Flanagan wanted his “good mate” Kurzel to make the film version. Kurzel was with Flanagan in London in 2024 when he accepted the Booker Prize. Kurzel, whose grandfather served in World War II, felt a personal link to the military story told in Narrow Road to the Deep North.
Kurzel’s other television work includes directing the frenetic two last episodes of 2025 Netflix thriller series Black Rabbit, starring and executive produced by Jude Law and Jason Bateman. Kurzel’s other film work included directing Boner McPharlin’s Moll, an adapted part a feature film comprising all short stories in Tim Winton’s novel The Turning. Kurzel directed films both starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard:, Macbeth for See-Saw Films, that premiered in competition at Cannes Film Festival in 2015 and Assassins Creed (2026).