Where the Green Ants Dream

In the Australian interior a large mining company wants to drill for uranium. But a certain part of the land is sacred to the Aboriginal community: it is where the green ants dream, and if their dreams are disturbed disaster will follow. The community sits down in front of the company and does not move. The company's geologist, Lance Hackett, is caught between them. The matter goes to court and neither side is able to understand the other. Werner Herzog's film is about the impossibility of translation between a legal system and an oral culture. The courtroom scenes are its strongest passage: the demand that the sacred be proved, and why it cannot be. The narrative does not idealise the Aboriginal characters, but the film's own position carries the limits of its period; the screenplay is Herzog's and the story is invented. Who it's for: Viewers who like Werner Herzog, narratives about colonialism, and courtroom-centred drama. Who it's not for: The pace is very slow and the narrative is symbolic in places. The film's use of Indigenous culture is also open to argument today.