With Pauline Hanson in the Senate and TV presenter Sonia Kruger’s recent call to ban all Muslim immigration to Australia, writer/director Abe Forsythe’s black comedy Down Under is more timely than ever.

A fictional retelling of the aftermath of the Cronulla riots, it arrives in cinemas across the country on August 11.

Opening with shocking archival footage of Sydney’s beaches seething with furious mobs set to We Wish You A Merry Christmas, the movie follows rival Anglo and Middle Eastern gangs as they tear strips off each other verbally and physically.

Forsythe was in London when the riots broke out and can remember the visceral shame he felt, mixed up with a strange longing to be back home in the sun.

Over 10 years later, what prompted these charged race battles is a conversation he says Australia still needs to face front on.

Down Under is his answer to that festering ignorance. Featuring confronting language throughout and moments of extreme violence bound up in bleak satire, it’s sure to divide audiences.

Offspring and Upper Middle Bogan actor Patrick Brammall called it “GOLD FOR AUSTRALIA” on Twitter, urging audiences to go see it.

Alexander England, from The Beautiful Lie and Paper Giants: Magazine Wars, stars as lanky, nice but dim S**t-Stick who tries to explain the riots to his young and far sharper cousin Evan (Chris Bunton) who has Down Syndrome.

“They reckon the beach belongs to us,” S**t-Stick says, referring to the Shire’s white population, with Evan replying, without missing a beat: “It’s a beach. It belongs to everyone.”

It’s brilliant to see an actor with Down Syndrome score a major role in a new Australian film, but for Forsythe to also cast him as the voice of reason in a mad, testosterone-fuelled riot of a movie shows the smarts smuggled in with this hot take.

Bunton nails another perfect line when Ditch (Packed to the Rafter’s Jason Rosniak), a white thug with a full-head tattoo in honour of his hero Ned Kelly, claims Ned wouldn’t stand for “all these Lebo c**ks bringing their grease here from other countries”. Evan points out, “Ned Kelly was Irish”.

Forsythe also takes a crack at the misguided macho posturing among the young Middle Eastern men seeking retaliation, as led by The Principal and Janet King’s Rahel Romahn as Nick.

Nick drags his studious cousin Hassim, played by Home & Away’s Lincoln Younes, along unwillingly by playing on fears for his missing brother.

As with the real riots, there’s plenty of blame to share on both sides, but Forsythe also allows each character some of our sympathies too. It’s easy to see how outright aggression en masse can drag in otherwise peaceful people and before long have them making mistakes they’ll live (or not) to regret.

Forsythe amps up the silliness even as he pushes boundaries, with kooky soundtrack choices including the themes from Dawson’s Creek and The NeverEnding Story plus Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn.

Jason’s heavily pregnant girlfriend Stacey (Harriet Dyer) ironically demands he stop mid-hunt to pick up kebabs for her, while S**t-Stick is harangued for bringing his grandfather’s gun from Gallipoli: “Where did you get it from, Antiques Roadshow?”

Hard to watch at times, that’s the point of a comedy trying to expose a thorny topic still dividing Australia, an approach we could use a lot more of.

Watch Down Under‘s powerful opening scene below (warning: some readers might find the content disturbing and offensive)