Director: Kitty Green
Two friends run out of travel money in the middle of nowhere and take the only work going: pouring drinks for a bar full of miners who have not seen a new face in months. The Royal Hotel turns that simple premise into ninety-one minutes of mounting unease.
What is The Royal Hotel about?
Hanna and Liv are backpacking through Australia when their funds dry up, and a staffing agency sends them to a rough pub in a remote outback settlement to earn their way back to solvency. The publican who hired them barely looks up from the bar; the regulars are friendlier, then a little too friendly, then unpredictable in ways the two women cannot quite name out loud to each other. Director Kitty Green builds the film around small shifts in tone rather than a single obvious threat: a joke that lands wrong, a favor that comes with strings, a night that runs later than planned. As the women's read of the town changes, so does their sense of whether staying is even a choice anymore.
Cast & crew
Julia Garner plays Hanna as the more watchful of the two, while Jessica Henwick's Liv leans into the trip's chaos before the mood turns. Hugo Weaving anchors the pub as its weathered, unreadable owner, with Daniel Henshall, Toby Wallace and James Frecheville filling out the regulars whose intentions keep shifting. Ursula Yovich and Herbert Nordrum round out a cast that director Kitty Green keeps tightly focused on a handful of faces in one isolated setting.
Context & significance
Released in 2023, The Royal Hotel is an Australian-British co-production and Kitty Green's follow-up to her acclaimed drama The Assistant, again working with Julia Garner. The film draws its atmosphere from a real strand of outback pub culture, where itinerant workers pass through isolated towns for cash work, and Green uses that backdrop to build a slow-burning thriller about reading a room correctly before it is too late.
Where & how to watch
The Royal Hotel is available to watch on K-Time with a free account login, presented with a Farsi-language interface and both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles for viewers who prefer either option. No special access or payment details are needed to browse the title's page — only watching the film itself requires signing in.