Utopia

In Utopia the veteran campaigning journalist John Pilger returns to his native Australia to investigate the plight of the Aboriginal people. What’s extraordinary is how little has changed since he first went back from Britain to write this story in 1969. Despite governmental apologies, commissions and policy initiatives the desperately poor people of the (presently ill-named) Utopia homeland in the Northern Terrorities are still without proper sanitation, homes or jobs. A third of Aboriginies still dies before 45. Pilger covers the history of exploitation and contrasts the AUS$2,000-a-night “eco” luxury tents at Uluru with the locals’ tarp-covered shacks nearby. And Pilger does what he does best: interviews Government ministers and leaves them angry and whimpering. John Pilger, 12A 110min