Three mixed-race aboriginal girls are removed from their home to be assimilated into white settler culture in an integrationist school on the other side of Australia. The plan is to train them for domestic service. Based on a true events in the 1930s, the film tells the story of their escape and struggle to return to their community following the white mans rabbit-proof fence that stretched from coast to coast.

With minimal dialogue Noyce handles an emotive topic with subtlety, using the power of images rather than words. This is intelligent film-making not propaganda. Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury and Laura Monaghan give exceptional performances as the leads and Kenneth Brannagh portrays the government official spearheading the eugenics programme with conviction . The world premiere of Rabbit-proof Fence was held at an outdoor screening at Jigalong, the outback community the girls were taken from and where they still live.

Its a gripping, unsentimental tale the awesomely bare landscape is beautifully photographed by Christopher Doyle and there’s a haunting score by Peter Gabriel. Philip French, The Observer.

This journey, which evokes some of the same mystery of the outback evoked in many other Australian films, is beautiful, harrowing and sometimes heartbreaking. Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times