David Stratton’s guide to Australia’s best Indigenous films
In recent years, the lives of Aboriginal people have featured in some of the best films made in this country, including a large number created by Indigenous directors and cinematographers. David Stratton names the films you must see.
For a long time, Indigenous Australians were poorly served by Australian filmmakers; Charles Chauvel’s pioneering Jedda (1955) was an outstanding exception. But in recent years, the lives of Aboriginal people have featured in some of the best films made in this country, including a large number created by Indigenous directors and cinematographers.
There are several reasons for the emergence of talented Indigenous filmmakers. The Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), founded in Alice Springs in 1980 as a radio station, gradually moved into the training of Aboriginal filmmakers. Among those trained at the CAAMA were Rachel Perkins, Warwick Thornton, Ivan Sen, Beck Cole and Catriona McKenzie.
The Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) in Sydney subsequently enrolled these filmmakers. This coincided with the policy at the Australian Film Commission (AFC) from 1993, under director Cathy Robinson and board chair Sue Milliken, to encourage the production of Indigenous films.
Consequently, from the turn of the century a significant number of First Nations films, many made by Indigenous filmmakers, emerged. Born in Alice Springs, Kaytetye man Warwick Thornton grew up in a world of media and film.
Thornton studied film at the AFTRS and by 1996 was directing and sometimes photographing films and documentaries. He photographed Rachel Perkins’ Radiance (1997). Thornton’s first feature, the remarkable Samson & Delilah (2009), which he also co-wrote and photographed, premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival.
It’s a pretty unusual love story in which the lovers never exchange a word. Delilah (Marissa Gibson) lives with her aged grandmother Kitty (Mitjili Gibson), in an isolated, impoverished Aboriginal community in the NT. Kitty creates bark paintings that are taken away by a white agent to be sold in Alice Springs. Samson (Rowan McNamara) lives in the same community; addicted to sniffing glue and petrol, he is almost totally inarticulate, but he attempts to capture Delilah’s attention, mainly by throwing stones at her.
Later in the film, Delilah is kidnapped, raped and beaten by some white men; she is hit by a car and suffers a broken leg. Samson, whose petrol sniffing has increased, is too stoned to register much, but when Delilah recovers the pair head further into the desert, making a home for themselves in an abandoned tin shed. The film ends as the scruffy but beautiful pair sneak looks at one another while, on the soundtrack, we hear Charley Pride’s All I Have to Offer You (Is Me). It’s a richly evocative conclusion to a great Australian movie.
Thornton has an intimate knowledge of the way people live in the neglected communities that are found all over Central Australia. For white audiences, Samson & Delilah proved an eye-opener, not only for its unflinching depiction of the extreme poverty in which so many of Australia’s Indigenous people exist, but also for the callous ways in which they are exploited by white Australians.
Thornton’s outstanding feature-film debut won the coveted Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for best first feature film as well as prizes for Best Film, Direction, Original Screenplay, Cinematography and Sound at the 2009 AFI Awards.
Thornton’s second feature film, Sweet Country (2017), premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival. I was a member of the international jury and first experienced this towering film at its official screening in the presence of the director and some of the actors.
Afterwards, the jury members – including US actor Annette Bening, who was president of the jury – were unanimous in their praise; the competition was packed with excellent work, but we awarded the film the Jury Prize. At the closing ceremony, I was pleased to be able to present the award to Thornton personally.
Sweet Country is set in outback Australia in the late 1920s. After serving as a soldier in the war, Harry March (Ewen Leslie) arrives in this remote area to run a small, shabby property. He seeks help from Fred Smith (Sam Neill), his closest neighbour. Smith, a religious man, offers March the assistance of Sam (Hamilton Morris), his Aboriginal servant, and Sam duly presents himself at March’s place accompanied by his wife, Lizzie (Natassia Gorey-Furber).
The alcoholic, bitter March – no doubt suffering from PTSD – treats Sam and Lizzie appallingly; in one terrifying scene staged in complete darkness, he rapes the woman. Then March turns up, hopelessly drunk, at the Smith property and starts shooting; Sam kills him, and he and Lizzie flee, knowing that white man’s justice will not favour them.
A posse, led by Police Sergeant Fletcher (Bryan Brown), sets off in pursuit. A troubling tale of crime and punishment in a fairly lawless era, Sweet Country is magnificently photographed (by Thornton, with second-unit work by his son, Dylan River) and acted. The tragic realism of a scenario in which an Indigenous man is forced to shoot a deranged white man to protect himself and his wife unfolds with a measured inevitability.
Sweet Country confirms Thornton as one of our finest screen storytellers, a passionate, lyrical filmmaker whose personal history informs his art.
Thornton’s subsequent feature, The New Boy (2023), which is set on a remote Christian mission during World War II, is less impressive mainly because the screenplay, by the director, seems to run out of steam. But, once again, Thornton’s photography is immensely impressive, as are the performances by Cate Blanchett, Wayne Blair, Deborah Mailman and nine-year-old Aswan Reid as New Boy; Reid won Best Lead Actor at the AACTAs.
Rachel Perkins, the daughter of activist Charles Perkins, was born in Canberra but is an Arrernte and Kalkadoon woman whose roots are in Central Australia.
Perkins’ first feature, Radiance (1997), is based on a 1982 stage play by Louis Nowra. It is structured around a familiar formula – that of siblings who are reunited after a lengthy separation. In Radiance, the women come together for the funeral of their mother, who had been cared for by Mae (Trisha Morton-Thomas), the middle sister.
The film was the first feature since Tracy Moffatt’s Bedevil (1993), made four years earlier, to be directed by an Indigenous woman, and it deserves praise for showcasing the talents of the Aboriginal women at its core – Deborah Mailman is particularly fine as the lively sister Nona, and she won the 1998 AFI Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
Perkins’ greatest achievement in feature-film production is the exhilarating Bran Nue Dae (2009), a superb screen adaptation of the first Aboriginal stage musical. Jimmy Chi and his band, Knuckles, wrote the piece that premiered in 1990, as part of the Festival of Perth.
Willie (Rocky McKenzie), who lives in Broome, loves Rosie (Jessica Mauboy), but is sent to a boarding school in Perth. Unhappy with life there under the watchful eye of Father Benedictus (Geoffrey Rush), Willie sets out for home. This thoroughly enjoyable musical is filled with great songs and terrific performances. Perkins’ energetic direction keeps the narrative barrelling along, so that you’re left wanting more at the end.
Perkins subsequently made Mabo (2012), an impressive biography of land rights activist Eddie Mabo, and the solid TV movie Redfern Now: Promise Me (2014), before turning her hand to a fine adaptation of Craig Silvey’s 2009 young adult book, Jasper Jones (2016).
For the rest of the decade Perkins kept busy directing TV series (Total Control and Mystery Road), and in 2022 her ambitious three-part miniseries, The Australian Wars – about the brutal colonisation of this country – made a major impression.
Another prominent Indigenous filmmaker, Ivan Sen, was born in Nambour, Queensland. His stepfather was a newspaper editor who encouraged Sen to take an interest in the arts. His first feature, Beneath Clouds (2001), was an instant success and was selected for a competition slot at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2002, where it won the award for Best First Movie.
Steeped in autobiographical elements, the film explores the journey made by two alienated young Aboriginal people from a NSW country town.
Beneath Clouds is beautifully photographed by Allan Collins – who won the AFI Award for Best Cinematography – and acted with appealing naturalness and lack of affectation. This depiction of two young Aboriginal people whose journey is regularly marred by the barely concealed hostility of white Australians represents another important landmark in Aboriginal cinema.
There would be a nine-year wait before Sen made a second feature film. Dreamland (2010) proved to be a complete departure, a strange film about UFOs set in Arizona. But this oddity was quickly followed by the powerful Toomelah (2011), which was filmed in the NSW/Queensland border township where Sen’s mother was born and raised.
From the small-scale, clearly personal drama of Toomelah, Sen made a huge advance with Mystery Road (2013), an outback thriller that he wrote, photographed and edited and for which he composed the score.
Selected to open the Sydney Film Festival, Mystery Road is set in an outback community in Queensland (it was filmed near Winton). In the opening scene, the driver of a road train stops to check his tyres and discovers the body of a young woman, her throat cut, lying by the road.
The investigation into the murder is led by an Indigenous policeman, Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen). With a running time of a little more than two hours, the drama is overly protracted and the pacing is slow. Nevertheless, the film is gripping, thanks in no small measure to the superb use of the remote locations and to the fine central performances.
Three years later a sequel, also starring Pedersen as Jay Swan, again opened the Sydney Film Festival. Goldstone (2016), on which Sen performed all the same functions that he had on the previous film, begins as Jay is still struggling to come to terms with the events that concluded Mystery Road.
The film was so successful that a TV series spin-off resulted, running for two seasons (2018 and 2020) and attracting actors of the calibre of Judy Davis. Sen did not direct the TV series; Perkins directed all six episodes, while Wayne Blair and Warwick Thornton shared the direction of the 2020 episodes.
The six-part Mystery Road: Origin appeared in 2022, directed by Thornton’s son, Dylan River, and starring Mark Coles Smith as the young Jay Swan
Sen’s Limbo (2023) won the 2024 AACTA Award for Best Indie Film. Set in Coober Pedy and strikingly filmed in black and white, the film stars Simon Baker as a city cop who arrives in this remote community to investigate a disappearance.
Catriona McKenzie is a Gunai/Kurnai woman whose first feature, Satellite Boy (2012), was filmed in the Kimberley, around Wyndham and Kununurra. This beautifully made movie is about Pete (Cameron Wallaby), a boy who misses his mother; she has left the community, apparently to further her education.
Peter lives with his grandfather, Jagamarra (David Gulpilil). When a mining company threatens the pair with eviction, Pete and his slightly older friend, Kalmain (Joseph Pedley), decide to plead with the boss not to carry out the eviction. For a while it seems as though tragedy will enfold these kids, but all ends well. Satellite Boy lacks the rich insights of, say, Samson & Delilah, but it’s nonetheless an affecting work.
Wayne Blair was born in Taree, the son of a professional soldier. A Batjala, Mununjali and Wakka Wakka man, Blair’s first feature as director, The Sapphires (2012), premiered out of competition in Cannes and became a worldwide success.
Blair had acted in the 2004 stage production of Tony Briggs’s play, which is based on real events, and the film is a fine transposition of the material from one art form to another.
It’s 1968 and Julie (Jessica Mauboy) is a single mother. Gail (Deborah Mailman) and Cynthia (Miranda Tapsell) persuade Julie to join them in taking part in a talent competition at a local pub, and they come to the attention of alcoholic promoter Dave Lovelace (Chris O’Dowd), who agrees to become their manager.
Kay (Shari Sebbens), a victim of the Stolen Generations who has been living in Melbourne as a white woman, rejoins the group, and they switch from singing country and western songs to soul on Dave’s advice. Dave arranges for them to perform for US troops in Vietnam.
Based on real characters and events, this delicious feel-good entertainment is smartly directed by Blair. The sassy quartet of Aboriginal women is terrific company, and the dialogue frequently sparkles. The film was, deservedly, a significant critical and commercial success. It won 11 AACTA Awards including Best Film and Direction.
This is an edited extract from Australia at the Movies: The ultimate guide to modern Australian Cinema by David Stratton, Allen & Unwin, $39.99
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