The inmates and guards of a modern, clean and efficient maximum security wing are slowly and increasingly brutalized until they erupt in violence.
Amy's father, Franco, was a popular rock musician accidentally electrocuted while performing on stage. The psychological trauma leaves Amy mute and deaf. So the 8-year-old is brought by her mother, Tanya, to Melbourne to diagnose the reasons for her continued silence.
Set in the summer of 1910 in Australia the film follows the story of 14 year old Alan Marshall (Alexander Outhread) as he stumbles out of childhood towards the exciting yet forbidding world of adulthood. For Alan, despite the effects of polio, there is only one passion in life - to become a great horseman just like his hero, the reclusive horse trainer East Driscoll (Russell Crowe). Alan is one of East's few friends and also one of the few who knows about the affair between East and the aristocratic English woman Grace McAlister (Charlotte Rampling). Things inevitably take a turn towards the tragic when East becomes determined to force Grace to leave her husband and run away with him. Hammers Over The Anvil is an evocative coming of age film from Australian director Ann Turner.
