There were positive signs with a 10-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival, then others at the Australian and US premieres, then a screening for members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But The Los Angeles Times has quoted several potential Oscar voters at that screening as saying, off the record, that they wanted nothing to do with Gibson, his movie or any project he might make. "If Hollywood forgives that man this soon, that's messed up," one said.

Ticket sales suggest audiences are responding to the movie. In Australia, Hacksaw Ridge opened with $1.6 million – with a decent average of more than $6000 – behind Doctor Strange but ahead of the Hollywood new releases The Accountant and The Light Between The Oceans. In North America, it opened with $US14.5 million ($A18.9 million) – averaging $US5100 – which Deadline Hollywood described as "great".

Gibson is getting work too, acting opposite Sean Penn in The Professor and the Madman, a drama about the founders of the Oxford English Dictionary. And with a sequel to The Passion of the Christ still a while away, he has been offered a project from Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions that he might direct next.

Ambitious sci-fi doco for That Sugar Film filmmaker

Damon Gameau who directed and starred in That Sugar Film.

Damon Gameau had a very sweet result with That Sugar Film, his documentary about the damaging effect of sugar consumption. It became the country's highest grossing documentary outside IMAX cinemas, taking $1.8 million, and won an AACTA Award this year. Now Gameau is tackling global issues with 2040, which is described as "a science-fiction feature documentary that looks at the watershed moments between 2019 and 2040 that contributed to humanity turning a corner for the better".

Producer Nick Batzias says it will take the form of Gameau writing a letter to an imagined daughter on her 21st birthday about what went right during her lifetime. "We're unashamedly having a crack at changing the world," he says. While it sounds a tough documentary to finance given the budget will be close to $2 million, most of it was raised on Tuesday this week. It came from philanthropists and organisations interested in social change at the Good Pitch Australia seminar at the Sydney Opera House. A total of $6.6 million was committed to six films that were pitched, with other topics including the evils of the death penalty (Matthew Sleeth and Matthew Bate's Bali Nine film Guilty), the challenge of holding onto Aboriginal culture (Maya Newell's Kids) and organ donation (Richard Todd's Dying To Live).

Visa blocked for young Indian actor

Sunny Pawar in Lion.

Indian youngster Sunny Pawar is so charismatic in the Australian film Lion – holding the screen for much of the first hour as a five-year-old separated from his family in India then adopted in Australia – that heavyweight distributor Harvey Weinstein is planning a campaign to get him an Oscar nomination. But that plan struck a hurdle this week when US officials would not allow the eight-year-old and his father a visa to travel to key screenings in Los Angeles and New York ahead of the film's release. Weinstein Company president David Glasser is reportedly fighting the decision and believes "it must be the effect of immigration paranoia" afflicting that country. But when Pawar came to Australia to film Lion, he had no such dramas. A source close to the film says the paperwork took time given many Indian children do not have birth certificates or passports but there were no problems securing visas.

Twitter @gmaddox