First Nations Film Festival — NAIDOC Week

Overview

Not once but twice each year, the online-only First Nations Film Festival from streaming service FanForce TV delivers a feast of Indigenous filmmaking for your next couch session. The virtual viewing event first pops up for National Reconciliation Week. Then, it returns for NAIDOC Week. Across Sunday, July 7–Sunday, July 21, it's time for the latter for 2024, giving you two weeks to catch its impressive lineup.

While NAIDOC Week itself runs for just one week, ending on Sunday, July 14, the First Nations Film Festival is doubling the celebrations, giving you longer to see its five films. Leading the bill is Warwick Thornton's The New Boy, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and opened the Sydney Film Festival in 2023. As it tells of an Indigenous boy taken to a remote Catholic orphanage by outback law enforcement, it unearths a star in newcomer Aswan Reid — a talent that the writer/director likens to the late, great David Gulpilil — and also features Cate Blanchett (Tár), Deborah Mailman (Total Control) and Wayne Blair (Irreverent).

Other viewing choices across the fest include docos Naa Muru Gurung, Carry the Flag, Countryman and Mammung. The first steps into education, while the second explores the legacy of Torres Strait flag designer Bernard Namok Senior. After that, audiences can chart a 10,000-kilometre Northern Australia road trip, the dive into the living memory held by the Noongar people of seas rising 10,000 years ago.

At this at-home screen celebration — which you access via the FanForceTV platform on iOS, Android and PCs, including via Apple TV and Chromecast — viewers can tune in on a film-by-film basis for $15 per session, or buy an all-access pass to see everything for $38.