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Hamilton Morris and Natassia Gorey-Furber await their fate in Warwick Thornton’s blistering Australian western “Sweet Country”(photo: Sweet Country Films) 

Australian director Warwick Thornton has been lauded with awards from the world’s premier film festivals for his two feature films that deal with the trials and tribulations of the indigenous Aboriginal population. His debut, teenage love story “Samson and Delilah”, won the Camera d’Or at Cannes. Now comes his second full-length feature, “Sweet Country”, which picked up the special jury prize at Venice last year as well as the Platform prize at the Toronto international film festival.

A magnificent and poignant film set in the Australian outback of 1929, “Sweet Country” addresses racism and the treatment of Aboriginals by the white settlers of the Northern Territory. At its centre is a manhunt of Aborigine couple Sam Kelly and his wife Lizzie (Hamilton Morris and Natassia Gorey-Furber, respectively) following the killing in self-defence of a farmer who beats and rapes and subjugates Aboriginals.

Watch the trailer to “Sweet Country”

Through its characters Thornton tackles Australia’s dark and brutal past head-on--the building of the country on the back of land grabs and the willful slaughter and debasement of the indigenous people. “It’s a film about the truth,” the director told the audience at the first festival screening on Tuesday evening.

The bush setting is beautifully filmed--Thornton grew up in nearby Alice Springs, so knows the territory well--and the cast, including Australian legends Sam Neill and Brian Brown, as well as some first-time actors, play the piece perfectly. “Sweet Country” is an elegant yet merciless film with an engaging narrative that tackles weighty issues still relevant today.

“Sweet Country” is being screened at 7 p.m. at the Ciné Utopia in Limpertsberg on Wednesday 28 February.