When I was researching the film, Rabbit-Proof Fence, 2002, which tells the story of three “halfcaste” girls taken from Jigalong in Western Australia in 1931, a friend of mine, an anthropologist, said to me, “Things are worse now.” I’m afraid he may well be right. Juvenile incarceration, more babies and children being “removed” etc., etc.
This was how I thought I would start this essay on Ivan Sen. I wanted to go on and talk about Aboriginal filmmakers today, how they are what? The rising stars of the Australian film industry, the new wave? I wanted to, 2023. The characters “find hope in each other.”
