The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce

The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce is a 2008 Australian film directed by Michael James Rowland starring Irish actors Adrian Dunbar as Philip Conolly and Ciaran McMenamin as Alexander Pearce. The film was shot on location in Tasmania and Sydney between April and May 2008.

The film follows the final days of Irish convict Alexander Pearces life as he awaits execution. In 1824 the British penal colony of Van Diemens Land is little more than a living hell. Chained to a wall in the darkness of a cell under Hobart Gaol, Pearce is visited by Father Philip Conolly, the parish priest of the fledgling colony and a fellow Irishman. Pearce wishes to tell the priest his recollection of the horrors he endured in the three months spent traversing the brutal wilderness of Van Diemens Land. Conolly struggles to reconcile his desire to grant absolution to the convict with the story Pearce tells him. The title of the film comes from the remarkable interaction between Philip Conolly and Alexander Pearce days before Pearce is executed. The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce is presented as a psychoanalytical historical epic.The film details the convicts relinquishing psyche as he finds himself succumbing to the inevitability of his imminent execution. For much of the film, the complex relationship between Pearce and Conolly is examined. The circumstances and motives of Pearces execution are, too, put into question by Rowland. ........

Source: Wikipedia