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Films by Indigenous Directors

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993)
Alanis Obomsawin · 7 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, Filmzie · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, MUBI, MUBI Amazon Channel
In July 1990, a dispute over a proposed golf course to be built on Kanien’kéhaka (Mohawk) lands in Oka, Quebec, sets the stage for a historic confrontation that would grab international headlines and sear itself into the Canadian consciousness.
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001)
Zacharias Kunuk · 3 critic votes
Based on a local legend and set in an unknown era, it deals with universal themes of love, possessiveness, family, jealousy and power. Beautifully shot, and acted by Inuit people, it portrays a time when people fought duels by taking turns to punch each other until one was unconscious, made love on the way to the caribou hunt, ate walrus meat and lit their igloos with seal-oil lamps.
Samson and Delilah (2009)
Warwick Thornton · 3 critic votes
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, YouTube Free · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, Hoopla
Samson, a cheeky 15-year-old boy, and Delilah, live in an isolated Aboriginal community in the Central Australian desert. The two teenagers soon discover that life outside the community can be cruel. Lost, unwanted and alone they discover that life isn’t always fair, but love never judges.
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (2019)
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers · 3 critic votes
Streaming on Kanopy
When Áila encounters a young Indigenous woman, barefoot and crying in the rain on the side of a busy street, she soon discovers that this young woman, Rosie, has just escaped a violent assault at the hands of her boyfriend. Áila decides to bring Rosie home with her and over the course of the evening, the two navigate the aftermath of this traumatic event.
My Survival As an Aboriginal (1979)
Essie Coffey · 1 critic vote
Essie Coffey gives the children lessons on Aboriginal culture. She speaks of the importance of teaching these kids about their traditions. Aboriginal kids are forgetting about their Aboriginal heritage because they are being taught white culture instead.
Llacquiy Huata (1983)
Magdaleno Nina · 1 critic vote
Two days watching Don Valentin, Quechua pastor of lamas and sheep from the highlands.
PATU! (1983)
Merata Mita · 1 critic vote
In 1981, the New Zealand government invited the South African rugby team to tour New Zealand. This effectively split the country in half. Patu! is the story of the protest movement, HART (halt all racist tours). This documentary shows footage of protester meetings, rugby games and various beatings meted out to protesters from police.
Ngati (1987)
Barry Barclay · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Kanopy
Set in and around the fictional town of Kapua in 1948, Ngāti is the story of a Māori community. The film comprises three narrative threads: a boy, Ropata, is dying of leukaemia; the return of a young Australian doctor, Greg, and his discovery that he has Māori heritage; and the fight to keep the local freezing works open.
Nice Coloured Girls (1987)
Tracey Moffatt · 1 critic vote
Streaming on OVID
Nice Coloured Girls is a short film classic by Tracey Moffatt, one of Australia's foremost visual artists. Three Aboriginal women cruise through Kings Cross and pick up a 'captain' (a drunken white man). They encourage him to spend his money on them and to drink until incapacitated while they steal his wallet and race off to catch a cab, self-satisfied. Nice Coloured Girls contrasts the relationship between Aboriginal women and white men in the past and present.
Te Rua (1991)
Barry Barclay · 1 critic vote
A hundred years after the theft from New Zealand of three irreplaceable tribal carvings, two members of a Māori tribe decide it's time for ancient grievances to be put right. Variously praised as a major step forward in indigenous cinema, attacked for overambition, and little screened, Te Rua marked Barry Barclay’s impassioned follow-up to his acclaimed debut feature Ngāti.
Bedevil (1993)
Tracey Moffatt · 1 critic vote
Streaming on OVID
Three stories of the supernatural are recounted in this anthology. Rick, an Aboriginal boy living near a swamp on Bribie Island, is haunted by an American solider who drowned in quicksand. Ruby and her family live in a house near long-abandoned train tracks, which still carry ghostly apparitions. A landlord has trouble evicting the tenants of an old warehouse: a couple that's been dead for years
Seven Songs from the Tundra (1999)
Markku Lehmuskallio, Anastasia Lapsui · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Klassiki
An anthology of stories about the indigenous Nenet peoples of the Northern Russian tundra, and how their way of life was disrupted by the advent of Soviet power.
Two Cars, One Night (2004)
Taika Waititi · 1 critic vote
Sometimes first love is found in the most unlikely of places, like in the carpark outside the Te Kaha pub.
Ten Canoes (2006)
Rolf de Heer, Peter Djigirr · 1 critic vote
A story within a story within a story. In Australia's Northern Territory, an Aboriginal narrator tells a story about his ancestors on a goose hunt. A youngster on the hunt is being tempted to adultery with his elder brother's wife, so an elder tells him a story from the mythical past about how evil can slip in and cause havoc unless prevented by virtue according to customary tribal law.
Toomelah (2011)
Ivan Sen · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV · Streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, OVID
In a remote Aboriginal community, 10 year old Daniel yearns to be a gangster, like the male role models in his life. Skipping school, getting into fights and running drugs for Linden, who leads the main gang in town.
Drunktown's Finest (2014)
Sydney Freeland · 1 critic vote
Streaming on Criterion Channel
On a desolate Navajo reservation in New Mexico, three young people – a college-bound, devout Christian; a rebellious and angry father-to-be; and a promiscuous but gorgeous Nádleehi (trans person) – search for love and acceptance.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)
Taika Waititi · 1 critic vote
Free on The Roku Channel, Plex, Plex Channel · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, Peacock Premium
Ricky is a defiant young city kid who finds himself on the run with his cantankerous foster uncle in the wild New Zealand bush. A national manhunt ensues, and the two are forced to put aside their differences and work together to survive.
Sweet Country (2017)
Warwick Thornton · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, Pluto TV · Streaming on Amazon Prime Video, Kanopy, Hoopla
In 1929, an Australian Aboriginal stockman kills a white station owner in self-defense and goes on the lam, pursued by a posse.
Waru (2017)
Ainsley Gardiner, Awanui Simich-Pene · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, Pluto TV, Fandango at Home Free · Streaming on Hoopla
Eight Māori female directors have each contributed a sequence to this powerful and challenging feature which unfolds around the tangi of a small boy who died at the hands of his caregiver.
Empty Metal (2018)
Adam Khalil, Bayley Sweitzer · 1 critic vote
Free on Tubi TV, The Roku Channel, Plex · Streaming on Kanopy, Fandor Amazon Channel, Hoopla
Adam Khalil and Bayley Sweitzer’s first feature as co-directors, Empty Metal takes place in a world similar to ours—one of mass surveillance, pervasive policing, and increasing individual apathy. The lives of several people, each inhabiting extreme poles of American social and political consciousness, weave together as each attempts to achieve some kind of forward motion, sometimes in contradiction, and always under the eye of far more controlling powers.
The Mermaids, or: Aiden in Wonderland (2018)
The Karrabing Film Collective · 1 critic vote
At the end of the world, only Indigenous people can survive the toxic landscape so the white fellas steal ‘mud children’ to experiment on in the hopes of finding a cure. One such mud child, Aiden now returns to his ancestral lands, where the mermaids were meant to protect him. But the mermaids are being targeted too.
Cousins (2021)
Ainsley Gardiner, Briar Grace-Smith · 1 critic vote
Connected by blood but separated by circumstances, three cousins spend a lifetime in search of each other.

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