Zak Hilditch debuts We Bury the Dead in cinemas tonight
Screenwest caught up with Western Australian writer/director Zak Hilditch to ask him 10 questions ahead of his film’s Australian and New Zealand theatrical release.
Western Australian writer/director Zak Hilditch (1922, These Final Hours) is set to premiere his latest film, We Bury the Dead in cinemas across Australia and New Zealand tonight. It’s a terrifying yet moving story about enduring grief, loss and the undead, offering a refreshing take on the zombie genre.
After a military experiment in Tasmania goes horribly wrong, Ava (Daisy Ridley Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens) desperately searches for her husband in the aftermath. Hoping to find him alive, Ava joins a “body retrieval unit”, but her search takes a chilling turn when the corpses she’s burying start showing signs of life, and are growing more violent with every passing hour. The film also stars Brenton Thwaites (Titans) and Mark Coles Smith (Mystery Road: Origin).
Screenwest caught up with Zak to ask him 10 questions ahead of his Australian and New Zealand theatrical release.
Zak – today is the day! Your movie is coming out! What does today look like for you? Apart from the usual school run, I’ll be doing an impromptu Q&A for some family who will be seeing it for the very first time.
You’ve screened We Bury the Dead to audiences at SXSW, Melbourne International Film Festival, Adelaide Film Festival and CinefestOZ, and last Friday night you got to screen it to your first Perth audience. How did it go? How was the vibe at Luna Cinemas, Leederville? It was fantastic and a true homecoming of sorts given how all my formative years dreaming of being a filmmaker in my teens all kicked off at the Luna Leederville. They were so supportive of These Final Hours a decade ago and have been great champions of We Bury The Dead all these years later.
Daisy Ridley, Zak Hilditch at the “We Bury The Dead” Premiere during the SXSW Conference & Festivals held at the ZACH Theatre on March 9, 2025 in Austin, Texas.
You’ve now filmed a feature film in Albany, Perth, Vancouver and New Mexico. What are some of the most memorable differences or quirky things you noticed about filming in each place? Wherever I’ve filmed, I’ve always quickly realised how similar passionate crews are to the ones here in Perth. I’ve been pretty lucky to work on films with literally no dickheads.
Where else in the world would you love to shoot and why? There were certainly some breathtaking locations down in Albany we had to leave on the table. I feel like I have a whole other film’s worth of locations I left down there. I’d also love to go back to New Mexico some time and film something, the place is so spectacular and I barely touched the sides of that landscape.
Why do you love Stephen King so much?
King just has such a knack for getting under his characters skin in such dark and twisted, yet altogether realistic and human ways. I was blown away by his novella 1922 for this very reason and couldn’t get the story out of my head. It really haunted me and I started to obsess over bringing it to the screen. Luckily I finally got it over the line and am still pinching myself that King himself really dug it.
If you were to ever say yes to directing someone else’s script, who’s would it be? Interesting question. Perhaps King himself!
You’ve written millions of movies, what kind of TV series do you see yourself writing? Essentially it’d be something much in the vein of my films, ordinary people dealing with extraordinary situations.
What are you watching at the moment? Lots of Teen Titans, Miss Rachel and Noddy. As you can probably guess, I don’t get control of the remote too often in our house. Though I did get to finally see Bugonia recently which I loved.
What are you currently working on? What’s next for Zak Hilditch? Just keeping my fingers in pies at the moment and hoping one of them goes. I have one particular project with Kelvin and Grant from The Penguin Empire producing again that we hopefully have some good news to report on soon.
Who are your career idols? Early on it was Kubrick and Tarantino but now it’s literally anyone who pulls off making a movie. It certainly isn’t for the faint of heart and those that keep doing it I really can’t help but admire.
We Bury the Dead is now showing in cinemas across Australia and New Zealand.
Image credits: Behind the scenes on the set of We Bury the Dead in Albany. All images courtesy of The Penguin Empire.