Ray Martin: Mysteries Of The Outback (2023)

Gulpilil: One Red Blood

An hour-long documentary on the life and career of actor David Gulpilil.

We Don't Need a Map

Filmmaker Warwick Thornton investigates our relationship to the Southern Cross, in this fun and thought provoking ride through Australia's cultural and political landscape.

In My Own Words

The raw, heartfelt and often funny journey of adult Aboriginal students and their teachers as they discover the transformative power of reading and writing for the first time.

My Survival as an Aboriginal

Essie Coffey gives the children lessons on Aboriginal culture. She speaks of the importance of teaching these kids about their traditions. Aboriginal kids are forgetting about their Aboriginal heritage because they are being taught white culture instead.

Last Stop Larrimah: Murder Down Under

Nestled deep in the Australian Outback is the town of Larrimah and its 11 eccentric residents. When one of them mysteriously disappears into thin air, the remaining residents become suspects and a long history of infighting is unveiled.

The Bowraville Murders

The epic David vs Goliath battle for justice waged by the families of three Aboriginal children murdered in a small rural town 30 years ago, the system that failed them, and what it reveals about racism in Australia today.

Young Mob Questioning Treaty

Young Aboriginal people who are traditional custodians in Victoria explore the Treaty process with questions, concerns and their opinions. Sharing their insights into what has been happening and what needs to happen.

Still We Rise

50 years on, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy is the oldest continuing protest occupation site in the world. Taking a fresh lens this is a bold dive into a year of protest and revolutionary change for First Nations people.

Gurrumul

Blind from birth, Dr G Yunupingu found his identity through song and the haunting voice that has already become legend. His debut album introduced Australia to the Songlines and culture of his Elcho Island community, but now Dr G Yunupingu finds himself increasingly torn between city and country, present and past, self and the community to which he owes so much.

Incarceration Nation

An examination of the connection between relentless government intervention since colonisation to the trauma and disadvantage experiences by Indigenous Australians - the two key drivers of incarceration.

Ablaze

A feature documentary about opera singer Tiriki Onus who finds a 70-year-old silent film believed to be made by his grandfather, Aboriginal leader and filmmaker Bill Onus. As Tiriki travels across the continent and pieces together clues to the film’s origins, he discovers more about Bill, his fight for Aboriginal rights and the price he paid for speaking out.

Where Is My Darling?

Meet Lanz Priestley, a charasmatic homeless man, who owns nothing but a phone and a Facebook page. When Lanz discovers taps have run dry in drought-stricken outback Australia, he raises the money to deliver drinking water himself.

Freeman

The story of a nation coming together around Indigenous athlete Cathy Freeman who delivered when it mattered on the greatest stage on earth. 20 years on, Freeman sheds light on one of Australia's proudest moments. In 49.11 seconds, Cathy Freeman's win at the 2000 Sydney Olympics brought Australia together as a nation.

Firestarter: The Story of Bangarra

Taking us through Bangarra Dance Theatre’s spectacular growth, we follow the story of how three young Aboriginal brothers — Stephen, David and Russell Page — turned the newly born dance group into a First Nations cultural powerhouse.

The Final Quarter

Australian documentary filmmaker Ian Darling re-examines the incidents that marked the final 3 years of Indigenous footballer Adam Goodes' playing career. Made entirely from archival footage, photos and interviews sourced from television, radio and newspapers, the film reviews the national conversation that took place over this period.

Queen of the Desert

Not only has she got pink extensions, painted on eyebrows, glitter stockings and superman hotpants, Starlady’s a youth worker in some of Australia’s most remote and challenging places. And she reckons that hairdressing can improve people’s lives. Like a real life Priscilla, Starlady takes us on a Queen of the Desert journey to Areyonga, an indigenous community in Central Australia, where she’ll work with a group of curious and cheeky young people.

Looky Looky Here Comes Cooky

A new songline for 21st century Australia - a fresh look at the Cook legend from a First Nations' perspective - the songline tells of connection to country, resistance and survival and features the cheeky, acerbic and heartfelt showman - Steven Oliver and a host of outstanding, political Indigenous singer/songwriters.

Hotel Coolgardie

Fresh off the plane and in need of money, two Finnish backpackers find themselves the latest batch of “fresh meat” sent to work as barmaids at the only pub in a remote Australian mining town.

Deep

DEEP brings the inspiring story of Australian twenty one-year-old swimmer, Chloe Osborn, and her journey to the Paralympics to the surface.

My Life As I Live It

In her second film, MY LIFE AS I LIVE IT (1993), Essie Coffey returns to her home in Dodge City where she and the A-Team are running in the shire elections. Inter-cutting between 1993 and 1978, the film presents the fascinating contrasts of a society in transition. Some of the kids we met in the earlier film now have families of their own and are involved in education, art and sports. Others are drifting, trying to cope with alcohol and depression. Most significantly, community programs offer the possibility of dignity and self-determination. In this film, Essie shows us the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) making a real difference. Although the CDEP has now come under attack from the Federal government, MY LIFE AS I LIVE IT portrays the CDEP as providing meaningful work and services to an impoverished remote community.

Namatjira Project

From the remote Australian desert to the opulence of Buckingham Palace - Namatjira Project is the iconic story of the Namatjira family, tracing their quest for justice.

Lasseter's Bones

Australia’s El Dorado was found by Lewis Harold Bell Lasseter – if we believe his claims in the late 1800s to have discovered a vast gold deposit in central Australia. This mysterious place has never again been found, and many believe it doesn’t exist. But one thing is certain: Lasseter was a larger-than-life character. Seen by some as an eccentric conman, he was ridiculed for his extravagant assertions, which he held until his tragic end. But Lasseter remains the embodiment of the Australian folk hero, who lived a life full of incredible adventures, tall tales and outrageous claims – including a possible faked death and his insistence that he designed the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The Ripple Effect

The Ripple Effect is a powerful documentary primarily centred around St Kilda legend and proud Noongar Nicky Winmar's generation-defining stand against racism at Victoria Park in 1993.

Servant or Slave

During the time of the Stolen Generations, thousands upon thousands of Aboriginal girls were taken from their families and pressed into domestic servitude by the Australian Government. They were supposedly employed as servants, but with total control over their movements, wages and living conditions, their lives all too frequently became an inescapable cycle of abuse, rape and enslavement, with consequences that echo powerfully to this day. Recounting the stories of five of these women – Rita, Violet and the three Wenberg sisters – Servant or Slave is a commanding piece of first-person testimony to a dark and unacknowledged corner of Australian history. Shot with admirable craft and humanity by documentarian Steven McGregor (Croker Island Exodus, MIFF 2012), Servant or Slave is a work of great sadness and urgency, bringing to forceful life the human tragedy of Australia's Indigenous history in the unadorned words of those who lived it.

Facing Down Under: A Backpackers Documentary

A 19-year-old high school graduate travels through Australia as a backpacker and accompanies his adventure with a camera.

Fantome Island

In 1945, at the age of seven, a young Joe Eggmolesse was diagnosed with Leprosy. He was immediately removed from his family and home and transported under police escort over a thousand kilometres to be confined on an island for the treatment of the disease. For the next ten years, a leprosarium for Aboriginal people became his home. A lush tropical idyll off the north east coast of Australia, Fantome Island was the home to a close knit community of indigenous 'lepers' who made the most of their existence as people living on the fringes of the marginalised. Now as a 73 year old Joe reflects on his indelible Fantome years. His incredible, poignant story offers a profound insight into one of Australia's hidden histories.

Kid Snow

A washed-up Irish boxer named Kid Snow is finally faced with a chance to redeem himself when he is offered a rematch against the man he fought a decade prior, on a night that changed his life forever. When he meets single mother Sunny, he is forced to contemplate a future beyond boxing.

Turbines

When immigrants Attila and Jana resettle in a rural Australian town as part of a government policy to populate isolated areas, they consider themselves lucky. Although they must work on a wind farm in the middle of nowhere, they have each other, and soon, a family. Problems with narrow-minded locals, the isolation, backbreaking labor and immigration officials are the least of their worries when bad things begin to happen to the animals and people in town. As the situation escalates, and fear begins to motivate them, Attila and Jana begin to wonder – are the Turbines only onlookers or guilty of the unthinkable?

Strangerland

Newly arrived to a remote desert town, Catherine and Matthew are tormented by a suspicion when their two teenage children mysteriously vanish.

Locusts

Two estranged brothers who are reluctantly reunited in their remote hometown at their father's funeral, become the target of an extortion scam at the hands of a gang of violent local thugs.

Sweet As

With problems on the home front, 15-year-old Murra is on the verge of lashing out. That is, until her policeman uncle thwarts her self-destructive behaviour with a lifeline: a “photo-safari for at-risk kids”. Murra isn’t entirely convinced, but she soon joins cantankerous Kylie, uptight Sean, happy-go-lucky Elvis, and camp counsellors Fernando and Michelle on a transformative bus trip to the Pilbara. On the trail, the teens learn about fun, friendship and first crushes, as well as the forces of ‘reality’ that puncture the bubble of youth.

Shed

An Aboriginal girl held captive and at the mercy of the station’s stockmen makes an unlikely friend and finds the courage to set herself free.

The Dustwalker

An alien spaceship crash-lands in an isolated town in the middle of the Australian desert, releasing an insidious parasite that attacks the brain of all creatures including humans, making them disorientated, unnaturally strong and violent. Sargeant Jo Sharp, readying for a return to the big city beat, wakes to find the township, her family and friends falling victim to an evil that is spreading faster than it can be contained.