The disturbing new Australian film Nitram begins with an audio recording of a boy being interviewed in the burns unit of the Royal Hobart Hospital in 1979.
We do not see the boy or the journalist as she asks him, 'Will you be playing with fire again?' and he responds sheepishly, 'No way'.
The journalist then talks to another patient, a blond boy of about 12 who has burnt himself while experimenting with a skyrocket. We see him in his pyjamas in bed.
This unnamed boy in the news footage says he has no intention of ever stopping playing with fireworks.
'Don't you think you've learnt a lesson from this?' the interviewer asks. 'Yes,' the boy says, 'but I'm still playing with it.'
That boy is Martin Bryant - the real Martin Bryant - who 17 years later will shoot dead 35 people at the Port Arthur historic site, a 90 minute drive from Hobart.
Martin Bryant, who shot dead 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania in 1996, is pictured with his father Maurice and sister Lindsay. A new film about Bryant called Nitram - Martin backwards - has opened after months of controversy
Martin Byrant's name is never used in Nitram. That avoidance, and the fact Nitram does not the show the Port Arthur massacre, have been cited by the filmmakers as evidence they approached this project with sensitivity. Bryant is pictured
The title character of Nitram is played by sometime Texan musician Caleb Landry Jones whose performance has already won him the best actor award at Cannes. He is pictured as 'Nitram'
From that point the Bryant we see in Nitram is played by sometime Texan musician Caleb Landry Jones whose performance has already won him the best actor award at Cannes.
The man responsible for the worst mass shooting in Australian history is never named during the course of the movie. Instead, he is occasionally taunted as 'Nitram' - Martin backwards, pronounced Nit-ram.
That avoidance of using the killer's name, and the fact Nitram does not the show the Port Arthur massacre, have been cited by the filmmakers as evidence they approached the project with great care.
From the day it was revealed in November last year that a movie was to be made about the Port Arthur gunman there was outrage - before a scene had been shot or the plot revealed.
A media release issued by streaming service Stan said the film would examine 'events leading up to one of the darkest chapters in Australian history in an attempt to understand why and how this atrocity occurred'.
The film, written by Shaun Grant and directed by Justin Kruzel - the team behind the harrowing Snowtown - would be shot in Geelong rather than Tasmania, and handled with 'sensitivity and respect'.
From the day it was revealed in November last year that a movie was to be made about the Port Arthur gunman there was outrage - before a scene had been shot or the plot revealed
Social media nonetheless exploded as users reacted with horror and dread.
'No. No. A million times no,' one critic wrote.
'No one wants to see a film about Martin Bryant, no one,' another said.
Tasmanian author Justin Woolley, who escaped Bryant's bullets as a child while visiting Port Arthur with his family, expressed his rage on Twitter.
'As a survivor of the Port Arthur massacre I would like to state that this can, and let me be clear, f**k the f**k off,' he wrote.
Tasmanian politicians called for filming to be stopped before it began or for the movie to be boycotted if that didn't work
Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared he would not try to halt the production but urged the filmmakers to consider the feelings of victims and their families.
'I am unnerved about the revisiting of the Martin Bryant case,' he said.
'It has scarred us as a nation deeply.
'I hope when this is done, and for those who choose to see it, we will remember the victims and their families and the torment that they have endured.'
Social media exploded as users reacted with horror and dread that someone would make a film about the Port Arthur massacre. 'No. No. A million times no,' one person wrote. 'No one wants to see a film about Martin Bryant, no one,' another said. Port Arthur is pictured
John Howard, who was prime minister at the time of the massacre and banned most semi-automatic weapons in its wake, was asked for a comment.
'My response is that I will not dignify the project with a comment,' he told The Australian newspaper.
Producer, writer and director Richard Keddie, leapt into the fray with an opinion piece published in the The Age three days after the project was announced.
'I believe a movie about Martin Bryant is entirely irresponsible and should be stopped in its tracks,' Keddie wrote.
'Do we need to be reminded of the madness of a man who shot little children? Do we need to understand him? To put him on a pedestal, no matter what the interpretation is?
'And most importantly, do we need to drag the families of the victims, dead and injured, and witnesses through this terrible act again? What a cruel thing to do.
'The damage this story will do to the people it means the most to is incalculable. As a wise friend of mine called it: "intentional cruelty".'
Nothing Nitram does suggests he will ever achieve anything of substance. He buys a surfboard and humiliates himself in the water. He can't talk to girls. He gives fireworks to school children in their lunch break
Kurzel and Grant certainly did not set out to be cruel to anyone.
Grant was living in Los Angeles in 2018 when he saw two television broadcasters start arguing about gun laws in the wake of recent mass shootings, while he was watching a basketball game.
He thought of Port Arthur and began work on Nitram.
'Whenever such a heinous act occurs the perpetrators are quickly labelled evil and crazy, for this makes the news easier to digest,' he said.
'But I believe this to be dangerous, as we as a society stand to never learn anything from the tragedy.
'Instead, I choose to look closer. Not in any attempt to sympathise with the killer but rather to try and better understand what leads an individual to carry out such a crime.
'I understand a community’s wish to forget the man’s name, but to forget the event risks it repeating itself and I would much prefer our reminder to be a scripted narrative film than another news report.'
Nitram does not seek to offer Bryant a motive for his murderous behaviour, although it does suggest slights against him and his family filled him with rage
Reviewers of Nitram have been overwhelmingly positive, particularly for the performances of Caleb Landry Jones, Anthony LaPaglia, Judy Davis and Essie Davis. Left to right are producer Nick Batzias, star Jones, director Justin Kurzel and writer Shaun Grant
Now that the film is available to watch, albeit not yet in Tasmania, was all the rage justified? Not if the fear was that an event still painful for many Australians would be given a sensationalised treatment.
Nitram does not seek to offer Bryant a motive for his murderous behaviour, although it does suggest slights against him and his family filled him with rage.
The mildly intellectually disabled man-boy is not a sympathetic figure. He is an unlikeable outsider, a lost loner and loser whose actions are not inevitable or excused.
Above all, Nitram is a damning indictment on lax gun control. The scene in which Bryant is able to buy an assault rifle without a gun licence, with our knowledge of what will happen later, will make many viewers sick.
Nitram, the character, lives with his coolly restrained mother (Judy Davis) and increasingly despairing father (Anthony LaPaglia) in Hobart suburbia.
Nothing Nitram does suggests he will ever achieve anything of substance. He buys a surfboard and humiliates himself in the water. He gives fireworks to school children in their lunch break. He can't talk to girls.
Family and community members gather for a memorial service on the 20th anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre at the historic Tasmanian site in 2016
The Port Arthur massacre, in which 35 people died and 23 were wounded, is the deadliest mass killing in Australia's history.
Port Arthur is a former prison colony, now a popular tourist site, near Tasmania's capital Hobart.
On April 28, 1996 intellectually disabled New Town man Martin Bryant, 28, drove to the Seascape bed and breakfast and killed its owners before driving to Port Arthur.
After eating at the Broad Arrow Cafe he pulled an assault rifle from a
