Killer Native

Moogai is Bundjalung for ‘ghost’, and it is precisely a moogai that intrudes on the quiet home life of Sarah, Fergus and their newborn baby.

In search of his missing daughter, a young father must deal with his destructive actions and fears or lose everything he has.

An emotionally devastated woman seeks comfort in her choice to end her life. As she faces death in the form of a spirit, she must decide to let herself go to fight to stay alive.

Teens of Kangaloola High are visited by a skull-faced Aboriginal apparition in their nightmares, and one by one they meet a violent end.

When an amusement park is built on the grounds of an old cemetery, the dead rise to take revenge.

Svenja and her 16-year-old daughter Kira have traveled the world a lot. Svenja is a hotel manager and is currently bringing an aging hotel in Australia back into shape. But her biggest challenge is her daughter, who has switched to complete refusal and doesn't let Svenja tell her anything anymore. Kira doesn't avoid confrontations at school either, which in turn leads to conflicts with Svenja. After another argument, Kira decides to go to Jack. Jack is Aboriginal and Kira's only friend. Together, the two young people go in search of their “special place”, their own particular locality. Svenja is beside herself with worry when she notices Kira's disappearance and gives chase with Jack's father Kalti, a deeply relaxed hotel boat guide whom Svenja had released two days earlier. An adventurous journey begins in the barren deserted Outback - for Svenja and Kira a strange world, fascinating, but also life-threatening!

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.

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.

Outside the Australian town of Jindabyne, local man Stuart Kane is on a fishing trip with friends when they discover the body of a murdered girl.

Ella Havelka made history in 2013 by becoming the first Indigenous dancer at the 50-year-old Australian Ballet. In this engaging, MIFF Premiere Fund-supported world premiere, Ella – a descendant of the Wiradjuri people – charts her inspiring journey from growing up in modest circumstances as the only child of a single mother in rural Australia to gaining entry to National Ballet School, then spending formative years with the acclaimed Bangarra Dance Theatre before accepting the invitation of The Australian Ballet's artistic director David McAllister to join one of the world's foremost ballet companies.

Two drag queens and a transgender woman contract to perform a drag show at a resort in Alice Springs, a town in the remote Australian desert. As they head west from Sydney aboard their lavender bus, Priscilla, the three friends come to the forefront of a comedy of errors, encountering a number of strange characters, as well as incidents of homophobia, whilst widening comfort zones and exploring new horizons.

A family buy land set around a water hole in a remote location, that is occupied by native Australians. The two groups clash.

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.

Described as "an Aboriginal Kramer vs Kramer," this is the moving account of an Aboriginal political activist fighting his white ex-wife for joint custody of their son.

The Australian Aborigines (in this film anyway) believe that this is the place where the green ants go to dream, and that if their dreams are disturbed, it will bring down disaster on us all. The Aborigines' belief is not shared by a giant mining company, which wants to tear open the soil and search for uranium.

The first of four installments in the groundbreaking Heartbeat of the World anthology film series. Comprised of several short films by some of the world's most exciting directors, Words with Gods follows the theme of religion - specifically as it relates to an individual's relationship with his/her god or gods...or the lack thereof. In Words with Gods, each director recounts a narrative centered around human fragility, as well as environmental and cultural crises involving specific religions with which each has a personal relationship; including early Aboriginal Spirituality, Umbanda, Buddhism, the Abrahamic faiths, Hinduism, and Atheism. An animated sequence by Mexican animator Maribel Martinez is woven through each of the film segments, with each segment narratively connected as a feature-length film.

Bony, a great-great-grandson of legendary part-Aboriginal detective Napoleon Bonaparte. Albert Harris had been a teenager when he knew Napolean; decades later, as a tribal elder, he had tracked and rescued Napoleon's descendant from the desert, after Bony's parents had tragically perished. 'Uncle' Albert taught the young white boy the ways of the desert. Now in 1990, Albert stands beside the 22-year-old Bony as he is inducted into the Northern Police Force. Bony is sent to Woongala. His first case concerns Angela Hemming, the young American wife of the district's most influential landowner. She claims that a Ned Bowen had attempted to rape her, but that she hadn't pressed charges on the condition he left town. Non of this rings true to Bony and he begins to investigate.

Imagine what it would be like if black settlers arrived to settle a continent inhabited by white natives? In 1788, the first white settlers arrived in Botany Bay to begin the process of white colonisation of Australia. But in Babakiueria, the roles are reversed in a delightful and light-hearted look at colonisation of a different kind. This satirical examination of black-white relations in Australia first screened on ABC TV in 1986 to widespread acclaim with both critics and audiences alike. This is the story of the fictitious land of Babakiueria, where white people are the minority and must obey black laws. Aboriginal actors Michelle Torres and Bob Maza (Heartland) and supported by a number of familiar faces from the time, including Cecily Polson (E-Street) and Tony Barry, who starred in major ABC-TV hits such as I Can Jump Puddles and his Penguin award-winning Scales of Justice. Babakiueria was awarded the United Nations Media Peace Prize in 1987.

A story within a story within a story. In Australia's Northern Territory, an Aboriginal narrator tells a story about his ancestors on a goose hunt. A youngster on the hunt is being tempted to adultery with his elder brother's wife, so an elder tells him a story from the mythical past about how evil can slip in and cause havoc unless prevented by virtue according to customary tribal law.

Blackfella Charlie is getting older, and he's out of sorts. The 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 doing so sets off a chain of events in his life that has him return to his community chastened, and somewhat the wiser.