Cirrus@Austlit

Detective Travis Hurley 'arrives in a small Australian outback town to investigate a 20-year-old unsolved murder of a local Aboriginal girl. Forming bonds with the victim’s fractured family, Travis unravels a series of hard truths, highlighting the complexities of loss and injustice experienced by First Nations Australians.'

Source: Screen Australia.

'In a futuristic Hong Kong, assassin Jack (Ryan Kwanten), crosses paths with a nightclub singer, April (Jillian Nguyen). As Jack becomes increasingly drawn to April his body mysteriously deteriorates. Jack tracks down reclusive life extension scientist Doctor Bergman (Hugo Weaving), in a search for answers. Doctor Bergman unearths Jack's long buried secret and is forced to confront his own murky past. As the net that connects them tightens, Jack and April struggle for love as they face their past in a loveless world that is on the cusp of immortality and extinction.' (Production summary)

This film centres on an Indigenous mother dealing with a son arriving back from jail after losing another son to suicide. (Source: Brisbane Times website)

'Indigenous Detective Jay Swan arrives in a frontier mining town on a missing persons enquiry.

'What seems like a simple “light duties” investigation soon opens into a web of crime and corruption implicating the local Mayor, Mining Boss and Aboriginal Land Council.

'Jay must overcome personal differences with the young local policeman while he pulls his life together to dig deeper into the conspiracy. They are led into a world of people trafficking and organised crime at the heart of the local mining industry, where the value of a life is pitted against big money and deep-rooted corruption.' (Production summary)

Jay Swan, a detective, returns home to an outback town to solve the murder of a teenage Indigenous girl, whose body is found near a trucking route out of town.

'The film is set entirely in the remote Indigenous community of Toomelah, located on the NSW, QLD border. It was created as a mission during the 1930s, bringing together Gamilaroi and Bigambal people from the surrounding area.

'The story centres on Daniel, a small ten year old boy who dreams of being a gangster. He is kicked out of school and befriends a local gang leader, until a rival gangster arrives back from jail to reclaim his turf. A showdown ensues and Daniel is caught in the middle, leaving him with a choice to make about his uncertain future.

'Toomelah is a deeply personal story, that intimately depicts mission life in contemporary Australia. The film reveals the challenges facing the young Gamilaroi people of the Toomelah Community. Robbed of much of their traditional culture by Government policy, it is a community on a cultural edge, struggling for an identity. It is a provocative and yet comic story that transports audiences inside the community, creating an authentic world and way of life that is Toomelah.'

Source: Toomelah website.

'Dan Freeman, an obsessive UFO hunter, roams the Nevada desert around 'AREA 51' searching the skies for contact ... but alone in the desert he awakens to a bigger mystery ....'

Source: www.dreamlandthefilm.com/ (Sighted 30/09/2009).

'First Australians chronicles the birth of contemporary Australia as never told before, from the perspective of its first people. First Australians explores what unfolds when the oldest living culture in the world is overrun by the world's greatest empire.

'Over seven episodes, First Australians depicts the true stories of individuals - both black and white - caught in an epic drama of friendship, revenge, loss and victory in Australia's most transformative period of history.

'The story begins in 1788 in Sydney, with the friendship between an Englishmen (Governor Phillip) and a warrior (Bennelong) and ends in 1993 with Koiki Mabo's legal challenge to the foundation of Australia. First Australians chronicles the collision of two worlds and the genesis of a new nation.' Source: www.sbs.com.au (Sighted 27/09/2008).

'A Sister's Love is an observational, reflective documentary featuring Rhoda Roberts, best known as an Australian arts presenter and journalist. But behind her smile lies the tragedy of family turmoil, bigotry and the brutal murder of her identical twin sister.

We accompany Rhoda on a road trip home to Lismore in northern NSW to confront the terrible events surrounding the death of her twin sister, Lois, who disappeared while hitchhiking in 1998. Although the local police refused even to file a missing persons report because they assumed she had "just gone walkabout", Lois's brutally murdered remains were found in an isolated part of her Bundjalung homeland some time afterwards. Her skull has never been found and the perpetrator has still not been caught.

'A Sister's Love is both a film about family grief and a reflection of the historical Australian attitude towards indigenous Australians as second class citizens. This very personal story of Rhoda and her family still dealing with the grief of a lost loved one is underscored by the racism and bigotry that followed Rhoda and Lois throughout their lives.

Rhoda recalls how she was constantly afraid that she would be stolen from school by the local authorities and put back in a mission because it was assumed that she came from an underprivileged Aboriginal home. And she remembers the experience of growing up as the daughter of a white mother and Indigenous father in Lismore, where "darkies" weren't allowed even to eat in the local café, contextualising the local police's neglect of her sister's vanishing.

'Lois's surviving daughter Emily, whom Rhoda has raised from infancy, appears in the film as a constant reminder of the twin sister that Rhoda lost - an experience she describes as being like losing part of herself - and the land of the Bundjalung provides a beautiful backdrop.' Source: http://www.abc.net.au/ (Sighted 11/10/2007)

A short drama set in the cold, bleak terrain of the high country in 1857, as a young black tracker and his elderly sergeant move on the trail of a killer.

Deep within the cotton country way out west, a convoy of cars throw a dust trail into the dark sky. Leroy, angry with the world for hating his black skin, drives his mother and best mate to weed the back-breaking rows of the cotton fields. They are joined by two white teenagers with their own troubles. While tensions between the two groups emerge during the heat of the day, the huge dust storm will bring them together in a way none of them could have imagined.

Two Aboriginal teenagers are leaving their mission.