WIFT NZ Member Kerry Warkia co-produced a documentary called Sukundimi Walks Before Me, which has won the Sustainable Future Award at the Sydney Film Festival. The AUD $40,000 that comes with the award is billed as the world’s largest environmental film prize.
In 2016, a global mining company submitted a plan to the Papua New Guinea government to build a massive mine near the Sepik's waters. The scheme has the potential to pollute this biodiversity hotspot, destroying the environment, livelihood and wellbeing of the Sepik people. Emmanuel (Manu) Peni leads his community in a grassroots resistence, invoking Indigenous and ancestral knowledge against the forces of colonial bureaucracy and Western development. In following the campaign, the filmmakers, Matasila Freshwater (Vai, SFF 2019) and Lachlan McLeod, explore the Sepik people's spiritual connection to their natural world. As Manu explains, "the living river, this is our identity, it is us, it runs inside me".
Congrats to Kerry and all the team!
For more on the film and the trailer, head HERE