First Nations films

An Aboriginal girl, brought up on a Northern Territory cattle station, is fascinated by Marbuck, a full-blooded Aboriginal, who forces her to return with him to his tribal lands with a party from the station in pursuit. Australia's first colour feature was filmed on location under difficult conditions in central Australia.

Introducing the extraordinary Aboriginal actor David Dalaithngu. Nicholas Roeg's mystical masterpiece chronicles the physical, spiritual and emotional journey of a sister and brother abandoned in the harsh Australian outback. Joining an Aboriginal on his walkabout - a tribal initiation into manhood.

The story of a lawyer defending a group of aborigines accused of murder. With actor and dancer David Dalaithngu.

Phillip Noyce's debut feature film, Backroads, takes us on a vivid journey into the remote corners of white responsibility for black despair in Australia.

Fred Schepisi’s adaptation of Thomas Keneally’s novel The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith was a harrowing depiction of Aboriginal dispossession and exploitation during the early days of the colony.

An adaptation of the novel of the same title by Nene Gare, about the life of Aboriginal people in Australia, showing how they survive and ultimately triumph over their environment and enforced lifestyle .The first feature film featuring an all Aboriginal cast.

Constable Ray Lorkin struggles to maintain law and order in the Aboriginal community of Wala Wala. The geographical isolation of the community is heightened by the incompatability between 'white man's justice' and indigenous tribal law. The situation reaches crisis point when a young Aboriginal allows the white woman with whom he is having an affair to view a sacred initiation site. The screen debut of Indigenous actor Aaron Pederson.

"A film by trailblazer Tracy Moffatt, the first feature by an Indigenous director. A wholly original, highly stylised collection of ghost stories, the film is still one of the most intriguing and unusual works ever to have been made in the country." David Stratton - The Australian, 2021.

When their mother dies, three very different sisters re-unite at her ramshackle house on the coast of Queensland, Australia for the funeral. Over the course of 24 hours, skeletons in the family closet begin to rattle violently.

Blue eyed, fair skinned Lena is the daughter of an aboriginal mother, living in a small country town. She longs for the romantic ideal of her absent father and his Irish heritage. When her home life feels set to implode, she hits the road with little money, a backpack and a photo of her dad. When Lena misses her bus to Sydney, she meets up with Vaughn, an aboriginal teenager who has run away from a minimum-security prison in the desperate hope of reaching his ill mother. Like many young aboriginal men, Vaughn is hardened by his anger at the world. Initially the two reluctant travelling companions are suspicious and wary of each other, but their journey, mostly by foot and the odd lift, builds an understanding between them.

In the 1930's in outback Australia, three young Aboriginal girls are snatched from their mothers' arms in Jigalong, Western Australia and sent to a remote settlement at Moore River. Distanced from their mothers and forced to adapt to a strange new world, the girls attempt the impossible and embark on a daring escape. What ensues is an epic journey which tests the girls will to survive and their hope of finding the rabbit-proof fence to guide them home. Based on a true story of children, victims of the Stolen Generation policy in West Australia.

Set in the Australian outback in 1922, this film tells the story of three white men who use an indigenous tracker to pursue a fugitive.

en canoes tells the story of the people of the Arafura swamp, in their language, and is set a long time before the coming of the Balanda, as white people were known. Dayindi covets one of the wives of his older brother. To teach him the proper way, he is told a story from the mythical past, a story of wrong love, kidnapping, sorcery, bungling mayhem and revenge gone wrong.

Blackfella Charlie is getting older, and he's out of sorts. The Government Intervention is making life more difficult on his remote community, what with the proper policing of whitefella laws that don't generally make much sense, and Charlie's kin and ken seeming more interested in going along with things than doing anything about it. So Charlie takes off, to live the old way, but in so doing, sets off a chain of events in his life that has him return to his community chastened, and somewhat the wiser. Starring David Dalaithngu.

Adapted from Craig Silvey’s bestselling Australian novel and featuring a stellar cast including Toni Collette, Hugo Weaving, Levi Miller, Angourie Rice, Dan Wyllie and Aaron McGrath, Jasper Jones is the story of Charlie Bucktin, a bookish boy of 14 living in a small town in Western Australia.. In the dead of night during the scorching summer of 1969, Charlie is startled when he is woken by local mixed-race outcast Jasper Jones outside his window. Jasper leads him deep into the forest and shows him something that will change his life forever, setting them both on a dangerous journey to solve a mystery that will consume the entire community.

Successful Sydney lawyer Lauren and her fiancé Ned are engaged and in love, they have just ten days to pull off their dream Top End Wedding. First through, they need to track down Lauren's mother, who has gone AWOL somewhere in the Northern Territory.

Adam Goodes was a champion AFL footballer and Indigenous leader. In the final years of his career, the cheers turned to boos. Using archival footage only, this film reveals the incidents that provoked heated media commentary and divided the nation.

WWI sniper Travis, now a policeman in the vast and remote landscape of Northern Australia, loses control of an operation resulting in the massacre of an Indigenous tribe. With his superior officer's intent on burying the truth, Travis leaves before being forced back twelve years later in the hunt for outlaw Baywara, an Aboriginal warrior attacking new-settlers.

Former National Rugby League (NRL) star Dean Widders is a man on a mission. After fellow Indigenous players Preston Campbell, Timana Tahu and George Rose devised their own pre-game performance to match the haka of their Maori counterparts, Widders began a journey to bring this dance and First Nations pride more broadly to the game. So far, his advocacy has garnered support from the Indigenous All Stars League, but his dream is to have Australia's national team adopt this unifying battle cry.

Molly Johnson's husband is away droving cattle, leaving her alone to care for their four children at their remote Snowy Mountains homestead. Despite being heavily pregnant, Molly keeps various threats, from nature and other people, at bay. But when Yadaka, an Aboriginal man on the run from white law enforcement, intrudes on the sanctuary she has carved out, the brutal hardships and secrets that have followed them both throughout their lives must be confronted.

In remote Pilbara country in Western Australia, troubled 16 year old Indigenous girl, Murra, finds herself abandoned after an explosive incident with her drug fuelled mother. On the cusp of being lost in the Child Protection system, an unusual lifeline is thrown her way by her uncle Ian, the local cop, in the form of a unique Photo Safari. Before Murra knows it, she is careening down a dusty highway with a minibus full of at risk teens and two charismatic team leaders. Will this be the lifeline Murra needs or a catalyst for her demise? An uplifting coming-of-age road movie about unconventional friendships, first crushes and finding who you are on the road less travelled.

If Kindness uses allegory to analyse race and privilege, as it follows protagonist Black Woman (South Australian Mwajemi Hussein), abandoned in a cage in the middle of the desert. Following her escape, she walks through pestilence and persecution, from desert to mountain to city, only to find more captivity. Filmed across various stunning Australian landscapes in South Australia and Tasmania, Survival of Kindness is led by Australian producer Julie Byrne (AACTA Award winning The Babadook) alongside de Heer, and is co-produced by Ari Harrison (The Furnace).

In mid-1940s Australia, a nameless nine-year-old Aboriginal orphan boy is captured by police and taken in at a remote monastery for Indigenous boys. The monastery is seemingly run by a male priest, who has, in actuality, been dead for a year, without anyone knowing the cause. The lead nun, Sister Eileen claims to outsiders that the priest is still alive, and forges letters to create this impression. Eileen is supported in her work and her deception by two Indigenous individuals, a fellow nun who goes by the nickname "Sister Mum" and a male named George. Though times are difficult, the nuns care for the boys and desire to protect them through Christian teachings and shared manual work. The other boys are not provided any knowledge of Indigenous values, language or practices. Their ultimate fate is to be forced to leave very early and be employed as farm hands.