Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s impressive first feature reminded me of Aga (2018) in its often wordless depiction of indigenous peoples eking out an existence in a vast and remote plain.
Continue readingUtama (2022)
StandardTag Archives: Indigenous people
Sweet As (2022)
Standard
I won’t be the first to say that this warm, spiky coming of age road movie is sweet as.
Continue readingAudrey Napanangka (2022)
Standard
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.”
Continue readingWar Pony (2022)
Standard
It’s worth lauding this film simply because of its collaborative creation with Hollywood heavyweight Riley Keough adding weight to what is essentially an authentic indigenous story.
Continue readingKāinga (2022)
Standard
The third in a trilogy of films raising the voices of women (after Waru (2017) and Vai (2019)), Kāinga (or home) gives us eight short films each focusing on a girl or woman from an Asian country trying to find her place in Aotearoa New Zealand. The connection between them, as the stories span decades, is the same house on 11 Rua Road where they all live or visit.
Continue readingJames & Isey (2021)
Standard
A well-meaning but underwhelming documentary that fails to paint a compelling portrait of its quirky Maori subjects.
Continue readingAblaze (2021)
Standard
Ostensibly a deep dive by singer, and now filmmaker, Tiriki Onus into the history of his grandfather, Bill Onus, the result gives us important insight into the difficulties faced by Australia’s First Peoples over the past century.
Continue readingNew Order (Nuevo Orden) (2020)
Standard
I wanted to like this confronting, dystopian thriller but it is so unrelentingly cynical and brutal that it felt it had nothing new to say.
Continue readingNudo Mixteco (2021)
Standard
This stunning first feature by Ángeles Cruz interweaves the stories of three indigenous women across one festival day in a small village in the Cerro Nudo Mixteco mountainous region between Puebla and Oaxaca in Mexico.
Continue readingLa Llorona (2019)
Standard
Mixing just the right notes of folklore, social realism, tragedy and horror, Jayro Bustamante deftly weaves a compelling and emotional story about the genocide of the indigenous Mayan-Ixil people in 1980s Guatemala.
Continue reading
fillums 