Mystery Road

A town in Queensland. The body of a young Aboriginal girl is found in a drain under the highway. Detective Jay Swan comes back to his home town to investigate. Swan is Aboriginal and a policeman; his white colleagues in the town do not help him, and his own community sees a policeman and does not talk. Nobody gives him anything, and the case is one nobody cares about. Ivan Sen wrote it, directed it, shot it, cut it and composed the music. Aaron Pedersen plays Jay Swan, with Hugo Weaving, Ryan Kwanten and Jack Thompson in the cast. The shape is a western. Wide empty country, a silent town, a man moving alone, and a shootout at the end; Sen carries that into the Australian interior. The real subject is not the murder but that nobody minds it. That the disappearance of Aboriginal young people has become ordinary for the town is repeated throughout. Sen did every technical job himself, which kept the budget small and the work entirely under his control. A sequel followed and after it a television series; Jay Swan became one of the best known detective figures in Australia. Who it is for: viewers who like slow detective films and Australian cinema. Who it is not for: the pace is very slow, there is little dialogue, and some links in the investigation are left open.