A group of Indigenous Australians who were forced off their homeland are now living in cramped conditions in a tiny flat on the edge of a north Australian town. One morning a social worker appears at the door and informs them in no uncertain terms that unless their sister, the head of the family, puts in an appearance at the local authority’s offices by the end of the week they will have to leave. She must answer to complaints lodged by neighbours. But where is their sister? She’s gone. Just like that. Nobody knows where she is. The group sets off in search of her. They penetrate deeper and deeper into the bush until they are finally reunited with their family. But their sister is nowhere to be found.
As a group of Indigenous adults argue about whether to save their government housing or their sacred lands, their children struggle with how the ancestral Dreaming makes sense in their contemporary lives filled with hip-hop and dinosaur bones. WHEN THE DOGS TALKED mixes nonfiction and fiction in a thoughtful yet humorous drama about the difficulties Indigenous communities have living within the strictures of modern white culture while maintaining a sense of their own traditions and relationship to the land.
WINDJARRAMERU, THE STEALING C*NT$ blends Indigenous storytelling with modern worries over environmental degradation and substance abuse in a story about a group of young Indigenous men hiding in a chemically contaminated swamp after being falsely accused of stealing some beer, while all around them miners pollute their land.