The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce is a 2008 Australian-Irish film directed by Michael James Rowland starring Irish actors Adrian Dunbar as Father Philip Conolly and Ciarán McMenamin as bushranger Alexander Pearce and an ensemble Australian cast, including Dan Wyllie, Don Hany and Chris Haywood. The film was shot on location in Tasmania and Sydney between April and May 2008.

Plot

The film follows the final days of Irish convict and bushranger Alexander Pearce's life as he awaits execution. In 1824, the British penal colony of Van Diemen's Land is little more than a living hell. Chained to a wall in the darkness of a cell under Hobart Gaol, Pearce is visited by Father Philip Conolly, the only Catholic priest in the fledgling colony and a fellow Irishman. Pearce wishes to relate to the priest the horrors he endured in the three months spent traversing the wilderness of Van Diemen's Land. Conolly struggles to reconcile his desire to grant absolution to the convict with the story Pearce tells him. The title of the film comes from the interaction between Conolly and Pearce in the days before Pearce is executed. The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce is presented as a psychoanalytical historical epic.