Scott Hicks, the Adelaide-based director of seminal film Shine, turned his attentions to fatherhood for his latest project, The Boys Are Back, starring Clive Owen. He sat down with Garrett Bithell.

“There is this presumption that women are responsible for child-rearing – like it’s the natural order of things, which is kind of ridiculous in our day and age. There are countless men in the situation of rearing their own children, or wanting to be involved, and being excluded from it.”

So says celebrated Adelaide-based director Scott Hicks, who believes that fathers are often undervalued and misunderstood. Moreover, their role in the family is rarely explored substantively in film. It was this perceived gap in our popular culture that led him to The Boys Are Back.

Starring Clive Owen, the film is a moving and humorous love story between journalist Joe Warr and his two sons, from different marriages, who find themselves living in a boys-only household following the death of Joe’s second wife. It’s based on a memoir by Simon Carr.

“The relationships were so real, and the dialogue had a freshness and an authenticity to it that I hadn’t read in a lot of scripts,” Hicks tells blaze. “I got caught emotionally in the early grief of the story, which was the mother’s death, and what really touched me was the little boy’s absolutely childlike incomprehension of what is going on. When his dad tries to tell him and he says, ‘oh, will mummy die by dinner time?’ It’s heart-wrenching.”

The youngest son in the film, six-year-old Artie, is played by exciting new-find Nicholas McUnulty, who was also six at the time of shooting. His breathtaking performance as a grieving child is currently making waves in film circles around the world.

“He’s amazing,” Hicks raves. “I was almost in despair because even though I loved the script, I had this terrible feeling in the back of my head that I would never find a kid who could do these things – because it’s a hugely demanding role.

“And one day in walks Nicholas, and as soon as I saw him I knew – he was tremendously self-possessed, almost tipping over into a sort of defiance. That was what I needed.”

On the other hand, Hicks had Clive Owen in mind to play Joe from the very beginning. “There’s such a strength and stillness about him,” he says. “He’s not an overly demonstrative actor – he thinks all the time and the camera kind of reads that. And I love that the role played against his regular, tough, buttoned-together screen persona. I would have been devastated if we didn’t get him!”

Much of The Boys Are Back was film in South Australia, particularly the Fleurieu Peninsula, Myponga and Willunga, close to where Hicks actually lives.

“The film is ultimately about the nature of family,” he muses. “It’s almost like family is where the love is, but it’s not just about DNA. Family can be anything where there is a nucleus of love.”

The Boys are Back is in cinemas now.

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