Rabbit-Proof Fence

In Western Australia in 1931, state policy takes Aboriginal children with white fathers from their families and puts them in camps. Fourteen-year-old Molly, her sister Daisy and her cousin Gracie are taken this way. Molly decides to escape and uses one thing to navigate: the rabbit-proof fence that runs the length of the continent. They follow it home, with a tracker and the Chief Protector of Aborigines behind them. Phillip Noyce directed. Christine Olsen adapted the screenplay from Doris Pilkington Garimara's book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence; the author was Molly's daughter. Kenneth Branagh plays Neville, the Protector. Casting was the hardest part of the production. Noyce and the casting director Christine King saw around two thousand girls across Aboriginal Australia, looking specifically for children living in rural communities rather than trained performers. Everlyn Sampi got the part of Molly in a search run in the summer of 1999. None of the three girls had acted before. What the film describes is known in Australia as the Stolen Generations, and it was government policy for decades. Who it is for: viewers who want a true-story journey and the concrete result of colonial policy. Who it is not for: anyone needing a comforting ending. The film shows what happened to the real Molly afterwards, and that section takes back what the escape won.