Mad Max is the beginning of a great legend and the wildest, toughest, and most instinctive film in the entire series. The shock and fear I felt from the sheer force of its energy when I first saw this film are still vivid. It is a film that proves what true ‘cinematic cinema’ can be. — Director KIM Jeewoon
George Miller’s debut feature Mad Max (1979) marks the origin of the antihero who travels desolate roads in search of a new world, a lineage extending to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). While police chases after speeding cars and motorcycles form a major axis of the film, it dwells less on the thrill of speed than on the terrain of late-1970s Australia—its roads, towns, fields, and sea. It pierces through to the fear and nihilism beneath the violence of a world where law and order have collapsed and characters are ruled by grotesque desires. Combining newly grafted western conventions, Monte Hellman’s directionless road movie, tension-heightening editing, rock music that condenses the narrative’s emotions and mood, and characters embodying myriad subcultures, the film hurtles toward a punk world. In a world that “no longer believes in heroes,” Max’s face is eerily still after he succeeds in his revenge, even if he has to crawl. In place of the thrill of retribution, an expressionless body drifts like a shadow. The road toward resistance, riot, destruction, and apocalypse may ultimately lead to the women who carry the seed.
An Australian film director, screenwriter, and producer. He made his feature directorial debut with Mad Max, widely regarded as one of the greatest action films of all time, and continued the series with Mad Max 2 (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) earned him ten Academy Award nominations, including Best Director, and won six. He has also worked across a wide range of genres, directing Lorenzo′s Oil (1992), writing and producing Babe (1995), and directing the Academy Award-winning animated feature Happy Feet (2006).
From Busan International Film Festival 2026, No. 31
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