For many years after the Port Arthur massacre and the trail of unimaginable devastation that left 35 locals and tourists dead, information officer Wendy Scurr battled for proper support for herself and the fellow first responders who saved innumerable lives in the bloody aftermath.

As the politicians of the day steadfastly refused to open a public enquiry, conspiracy theories took hold in the vacuum that followed, as Wendy and others began to question what little was made available by the official narrative.

Years later, emerging documentary filmmaker Jared Nicholson met Wendy, trying to understand how survivors are reshaped by such monstrosity. When her understandable paranoia began to bleed into his own investigation, reopening old wounds of his own, Jared reached out to Ithaka (2021) filmmaker Ben Lawrence for a fresh perspective on the quagmire surrounding the unbearable tragedy.

More than a documentary, the astonishing Aftermath is a reckoning with truth itself.