A child meets her future self—and neither knows how to say 'I'm sorry.'
Loosely based on the filmmaker's personal experience, "Terra Nullius" is an impressionistic account of an eight year old Koori girl, Alice, growing up in a white adoptive family which denies her Aboriginality. The film examines how unacknowledged shame and fear passes from one generation to the next, from one culture to another. The last scene depicts a silent meeting between the young Alice and the adult Alice. In order to reclaim her life, Alice decides she must confront the pain and confusion of her childhood.
Direction
Pratten's impressionist approach makes memory feel like bruise you can't stop touching.
Acting
Michelle Lacombe and Olivia Patten share silence that speaks generations.
Director
Anne Pratten
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of Australia's 'Stolen Generations' cinema, addressing forced assimilation policies that separated Indigenous children from families until 1970. The title weaponizes the colonial doctrine used to justify land theft.
The two Alices never speak—director Anne Pratten deliberately denied audiences cathartic dialogue, mirroring how trauma survivors often lack language for their own wounds.
AU
