Sweet Country does not fuck around. It gets right to it: the brutal colonization of Australia. Set in the 1920s in the outback of the Northern Territory, the film is about a black man, his black wife, and their black daughter, and the family’s religious instructor, a white man. It’s not paradise, but they manage to get along. One day, an alcoholic and rock-hard racist ex-soldier shows up and makes the black man work for nothing, rapes his wife, and considers raping their daughter. Eventually, the black man kills the white man. And this begins a time of trouble that ends with this question: How will Australia survive this madness?
Sweet Country screens tonight and tomorrow night (May 18-19) at the 44th annual Seattle International Film Festival, which happens May 18-June 10. Showtimes for Sweet Country here; more recommended SIFF films here; and all SIFF films here.
