Luku Ngarra – The Law Of the Land (CTC)

Join us for a special evening featuring a screening of the award winning Indigenous funded documentary Ḻuku Ngärra: The Law of the Land.

Winner of the Change Award at Adelaide Film Festival and the Human Rights Awards at Montreal Independent Film Festival, Ḻuku Ngärra: The Law of the Land is the extraordinary story of one Yolŋu elder’s 45 year journey fighting for the political and spiritual freedom of his people.

Unflinching in his delivery and integrity, yet soft in his humanity – Rev Dr. Gondarra’s confronting and urgent message for Australians and the world as he questions the long standing paradigm that controls us all.

Rev. Dr. Gondarra OAM is an initiated clan leader within the Yolŋu Nation who has spent the most part of his 79 years of life as a civil rights activist, a spiritual leader, a cross cultural mediator, an educator and one of few elders who has dedicated his life to upholding the traditional law of his people.

Filmed over 5 years in Northeast Arnhem Land and as a result of a 16 year friendship between Dr Gondarra and Director Sinem Saban, Ḻuku Ngärra: The Law of the Land presents an intimate exploration of Yolŋu law and how it has kept their people in balance with the environment and with each other for over tens of thousands of years. With the onset of colonisation and the enforcement of its ideologies and laws, the film illuminates how this foreign system that is so completely at odds with their own has created chaos to their lives, their spirituality and the environment.

Through the first-hand experience living between two worlds and the pool of wisdom that comes from such an experience, Dr Gondarra demands that we ask the big questions around what is law, what is freedom and who is really in control of our lives?

Please note: This film is suitable for adults only.

Cast: Rev Dr Djiniyini Gondarra OAM, Biritjaluwuy Gondarra, Rarriwuy Hick, Baykali Ganambarr, Marcus Lacey

Director: Sinem Saban