Review first published by EyeforFilm When, with his previous, excellent feature Toomelah, Ivan Sen forced viewers to look hard at the long-term after-effects of historical mistreatment and abuse on a small town’s Aboriginal population, he sugared the pill with the barest ghost of genre tropes to remind us that it was not merely a stylised documentary…
Tag: Ivan Sen
Mystery Road (2013)
Review first published by Little White Lies “There’s a place called Slaughter Hill, it’s off Mystery Road,” says Indigenous Police Inspector Jay Swan (Aaron Pederson) into the phone, setting up the fateful rendez-vous that will bring Ivan Sen’s feature to its tense climax. It is also roughly where the narrative began, with a truck driver…
Toomelah (2011)
Toomelah first published by EyeforFilm Whenever 10-year-old Daniel (Daniel Connors) is asked, “Where you been?” or “Where you going?”, his response is always the same: “Nowhere.” This question-and-answer mantra, frequently repeated in Ivan Sen‘s film, comes to resemble a catechism of community nihilism and despair. The community, as the title suggests, is Toomelah, in the…