Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #122: Satellite Boy (2012).

Pete (Cameron Wallaby) is 12 and inhabits an derelict and otherwise disused drive-in cinema under a satellite in the Kimberleys with his grandfather Jagamurra (David Gulpilil), whom he calls "Jubi" and learns the ways of the Outback and Aboriginal traditions from. He wishes to open a restaurant there and hopes his absent mother (Rohanna Angus) will return to help him with that, but Jubi doubts she will return. Now a local mining company arrives to set up shop there, so Pete hatches a plan. He enlists his friend Kalmain (Joseph Pedley) to take a weekend-long bike trip with him to the big smoke to meet with the company's officials about this; being a fugitive from the cops, Kalmain agrees. But naturally, once the pair lose their bearings, the trip becomes a walkabout. Now Pete must count on his granddad's sage teachings to complete the journey and appeal to the company along with finding his mother, who wants to move with him to Perth and become a beautician.

Debut writer-director Catriona McKenzie, a member of the Kurai Gurnai Nation, discovered and fell in love with Western Australia's Kimberley Region while filming the TV series The Circuit there. That inspired her to tell a story set in the Outback, and Satellite Boy later became the first feature to be shot on location in the World Heritage-listed Purnunulu National Park and its Bungle Bungle Range. And what a worthy first such feature it became. It's very relaxed and gentle, but this is because McKenzie is more interested in studying Indigenous Australian traditions like Aboriginal mythology, philosophy and the rite-of-passage which a walkabout is, than she is in making a political statement with the mining company plot device. By treating that element neutrally, McKenzie instead offers a more family-friendly yet no less wise and tender tale of modern Aboriginal youth than something like Samson and Delilah (2009), and complimenting her beautiful direction are David Bridie's score and particularly Geoffrey Simpson's vibrant cinematography.

McKenzie's instincts also proved spot-on with her casting of the two young leads Wallaby and Pedley, but perhaps inevitably, Indigenous Aussie screen icon Gulpilil shows them how it's done the whole way. Satellite Boy is a unique, heartfelt, evocative and enjoyably innocent contribution to Australia's Indigenous screen history.