You can see that this film has been a labour of love and a way for director Penelope McDonald to honour her friend, Warlpiri artist and actor Audrey Napanangka. It took 10 years of filming and collaboration, over 160 hours of footage – while introducing the film McDonald aptly quotes Da Vinci, “Works of art aren’t finished, they’re abandoned.”

I went in to the screening thinking it would be about Audrey as an artist, perhaps with a little colour and texture about her life, and, although we get plenty of warmth and humour, McDonald ultimately gives us a searing and often heart-wrenching exploration of the sub-human treatment of Aboriginal people in contemporary Australia. It reminded me of Maya Newell’s In My Blood it Runs, as it is based in the same town, Alice Springs, and we see another child like Dujuan who is in danger of being jailed (children as young as 10 can be jailed in Australia and 65% of the 600 jailed each year are First Nation). Tyrese is Audrey’s grandson and he has struggled to control his anger since being taken without warning from school and placed with a white family for two years.

The treatment of children is a recurring theme, exacerbated by a colonial notion that Aboriginal parents are dead beats and that children are by default better off with white families. Audrey recounts two heartbreaking experiences when she had babies of her own. Both times she took them to hospital when they were sick and they were taken away then she was told they had died. No proof of this, no funeral, no information about where they were buried. It’s the way you treat someone if you think they are less than human.

Despite this, Audrey is a women of great strength, warmth and humanity. Her home is home to anyone who needs it; she quietly grumbles to her husband Santo (a very dapper Sicilian) about all the blankets she needs to wash but you can see that she would never have it any other way. Even though her paintings sell for thousands of dollars, they live a hand to mouth existence, focused on family and raising their grandchildren.

Connection with culture, particularly on her home Country at Mount Theo and Yuendemu, is what heals her and keeping Tyrese and granddaughter Leanorah connected to their laws and traditions is how she feels she can protect them from harm. In My Blood it Runs had the same message.

It’s hard not to feel a profound shame at the inequity, not just what has happened in the past and still affects our First Nation people now but what is still going on. Have a look at https://www.raisetheage.org.au/ for more information about what you can do to petition for the minimum age that a person can be incarcerated in Australia to be raised from 10 years to 14.

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Have you seen this film? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.