Nominated for 2 awards at the upcoming Sydney Film Festival, a rare co-production between Australia and New Zealand, directed by Matasila Freshwater & Lachlan McLeod Sukundimi Walks Before Me is an urgent plea by Indigenous people about their existential fight through lyrical expressions of existence, resistance and life along the mother river.
The Sepik River is the mother line for Papua New Guinea communities. Winding through mountains and rainforests, she is the crucial vertebrae connecting and supporting the region’s rare biodiversity and spiritual consciousness. But her livelihood and her communities are threatened by the proposal of a copper-gold mine being built near her waters, which could extract, erode and pollute an environment that she has sustained for millennia. The children of this river, led by Manu Peni, create a grassroots campaign to stop the mine from being built, resisting the forces of colonial bureaucracy and Western narratives of ‘development’ by invoking the Spirit of the river and indigenous knowledge. Sukundimi Walks Before Me explores this existential fight through lyrical expressions of existence, resistance and life along the mother river.
Screening at Sydney Film Festival (nominated in the Documentary Australia Award for Best Australian Documentary & the Sustainable Future Award) on 11 and 13 June. For Screening information. More film festivals will be announced soon, and there will be a general release in 2026.