Airdate: Movie: I Am You

Foxtel will have the Australian premiere of I Am You a true crime movie starring Guy Pearce, Miranda Otto, Sam Neill and Rebecca Gibney later this month.

It centres around a case which has been in the news this week because the woman convicted of murder was due for parole this week, but is being reviewed.

News Corp reports the movie was originally released in America in 2009 as In Her Skin but has been held up being released in Australia because of a dispute between the distributor and the filmmakers.

The film is based on a book co-written by the victim’s mother.

Never before seen in Australia, I Am You is a powerful and confronting drama telling the chilling true story of the 1999 murder of 15-year-old Melbourne teenager Rachel Barber.

Melbourne woman Caroline Reed Robertson was jailed for 20 years in 2000 for Barber’s murder. Robertson was due for parole this Saturday, August 10, but the Adult Parole Board released a statement yesterday confirming they will now further consider Robertson’s case at the end of 2013.

Written and directed by Simone North (Through My Eyes, The Day Of The Roses), I Am You features an incredible line up of Australian actors including Guy Pearce, Miranda Otto, Sam Neill, Ruth Bradley, Kate Bell, Khan Chittenden, Justine Clarke, Rebecca Gibney, Jeremy Sims, Graeme Blundell, John Butler, Steve Vidler, Diane Craig and Paul Bishop.

This shocking story of obsession has screened to critical acclaim in the U.S. as well as at international film festivals, with lead actor Ruth Bradley winning the award for Best Actress at the Milan Film Festival, for her outstanding portrayal of murderer Caroline Reed Robertson.

Rachel (Bell) is a dancer, beautiful and happy, loved equally by her parents Mike (Pearce) and Elizabeth (Otto), and her boyfriend Manni (Chittenden). But she could not imagine the horrific and diabolical turn her life would take when 21-year-old Caroline (Bradley) enters her life. The daughter of Gail (Gibney) and David Reed (Neill), Caroline is deeply unhappy and longs to have the life Rachel has.

When Rachel fails to arrive home after dance class, her parents know their daughter is in trouble and are instantly scared for her life. Frustrated by the apathetic response of the police, who think they are overreacting to a normal teenage rebellion, the Barbers launch a vigilante hunt for Rachel, armed only with the knowledge she was going to visit an ‘old female friend’ the night she disappeared.

Caroline is deeply disturbed. Isolated from her unhappy mother and disinterested father, she writes a chilling diary revealing the twisted pathology of a young woman filled with so much self-hatred that she plots to ‘become’ Rachel – at any cost.

I Am You was inspired by the book Perfect Victim, written by Rachel’s mother Elizabeth Southall and Megan Norris, an investigative reporter.

Sunday, August 18 at 8.30pm AEST on Foxtel Movies Thriller/Crime channel.

Encore screenings (AEST): Tuesday August 20 at 12.00pm; Wednesday August 21 at 6.40pm; Sunday August 25 at 1.10pm; Wednesday August 28 at 8.30pm and Friday August 30 at 6.40pm.