WINNER – Audience Award, Melbourne Film Festival
SELECTION – Telluride Film Festival
SELECTION – Toronto International Film Festival
How does one respected athlete become the lightning rod for an entire nation’s racist history? Aussie Rules Footballer Adam Goodes is a living legend of the sport and a longtime advocate for the rights of his Aboriginal people in the country, so respected and admired that he was named 2014’s Australian of the Year by the prime minister. But when he stands up to a racist heckler who calls him an ape during a game – and when he and everybody else discover that that heckler is a 13 year-old girl – he is surprised to discover himself the subject of an intense, hateful national backlash that is inexplicable by any metric other than the color of his skin and the racial anxieties that lay just near the surface at all times. While black athletes all over the world have found themselves quickly pilloried for their political stands (NFL star Colin Kapernick and the 1968 Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos spring immediately to mind), what Goodes chooses to do with his pain in the aftermath is as inspiring as it is heartbreaking. A deeply personal, provocative and cinematic exploration of Goodes’ own journey, Daniel Gordon’s THE AUSTRALIAN DREAM explores the emptiness that will remain at the heart of any country’s dream until it resolves the injustice that is central to its history.
SCREENINGS
Sun., 9/8 at 12:00pm – Ryerson – CANADIAN PREMIERE
Mon., 9/9 at 4:30pm – Scotiabank 10
Sun., 9/15 at 12:15pm – Scotiabank 10
