RABBIT-PROOF FENCE

Molly, Daisy and Gracie have white fathers and are therefore classified as “half-caste” – and, according to A. O. Neville, the Chief Protector of Aborigines, children like them should, for their own good, be separated from their families and subjected to cultural assimilation. Molly, the eldest of the three, decides to escape, taking her younger sister and cousin with her on a 1,500-mile journey back to their home community.

The story told in RABBIT-PROOF FENCE is based on real events. The girls did indeed manage not only to escape from the settlement but also to evade the authorities pursuing them. Phillip Noyce focuses precisely on their flight and on the constant, metaphorical struggle between Indigenous children, at home in the bush and the parched landscape, and the white officials who govern them – forever outsiders, yet convinced of their own superiority. This duality is also reflected in the film’s imagery, colour palette and soundscape.

Neville’s policies were enshrined in law and remained in force in some parts of Australia until the 1970s. Successive generations of children taken from their families became known as the Stolen Generations; the policies that enabled their removal have since been described as genocidal. Believing in the power of one specific story, the filmmakers, in a sense, dedicate this film to the indigenous people—from whom so much has been taken away—by respecting their perspective, acknowledging the power of their voice, and restoring a measure of their dignity.

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Text: dr Karolina Kosińska