Career
He dropped out of Medicine at Queensland University in 1972 and joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as a journalist. This led him to feature films. Bennett has directed 16 feature films since 1983.
His film Backlash was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival. Three years later his film Malpractice would be screened in the same section at the 1989 festival. His films have been nominated for more than 40 Australian Film Institute Awards, (Australian "Oscars") and Bennett himself has received 12 nominations for writing, producing or directing.
His film Backlash screened at the New York Museum of Modern Art's New Films New Directors Festival. Bennett has had three major international retrospectives. In the US (Chicago's Institute of Art Film Centre), Germany (Hof Film Festival) and in India.
Since 2011 he has been an Adjunct Professor of Creative Industries (Screen Studies) at Queensland University of Technology. He is currently working on a thriller about honour killings to be shot in India, and a feature-length film on intuition. Bennett was born in London of Australian parents and brought up in Brisbane.
He studied journalism and got a cadetship with the ABC in 1972. He spent two years working in Adelaide on This Day Tonight then went to work for Mike Willesee in Sydney. He then worked on The Big Country and The Australians before moving into feature filmmaking with A Street to Die (1985).
