The Family

The Family (2016)

Inside one of Australia's most notorious cults

TMDb

7.5

30/07/2016 • 1h 38m
original-title

The Family

status

Released

production-companies

Dogwoof

Big Stories

Film Victoria

Screen Australia

BBC

original-language

English

budget

-

revenue

-

Anne Hamilton-Byrne was beautiful, charismatic and delusional. She was also incredibly dangerous. Convinced she was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Hamilton-Byrne headed an apocalyptic sect called The Family, which was prominent in Melbourne from the 1960s through to the 1990s. With her husband Bill, she acquired numerous children – some through adoption scams, some born to cult members – and raised them as her own. Isolated from the outside world, the children were dressed in matching outfits, had identical dyed blonde hair, and were allegedly beaten, starved and injected with LSD. Taught that Hamilton-Byrne was both their mother and the messiah, the children were eventually rescued during a police raid in 1987, but their trauma had only just begun.

director
production-countries

Australia

United States of America

United Kingdom

spoken-languages

English

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