This moody and atmospheric film set in 1901 tells the story of three school-girls and their teacher from an exclusive Australian academy who mysteriously disappear during an outing one sunny day. The first great success of the Australian New Wave, Picnic at Hanging Rock is based on a novel by Joan Lindsay and given richly textured direction by Peter Weir. Evoking the Indian summer of the Victorian era, the film is dominated in turns by vague feelings of unease, barely controlled sexual hysteria, and a swooning lyricism. Rooted in the tradition of sci-fi and horror cinema, Weir depicts the school as a privileged elite gradually contaminated and destroyed from within by its inability to understand the mystery that confronts it.