Best movies like Backlash

Documentary by John Pilger looks at the awful truth behind white Australia's dysfunctional relationship with Indigenous Australians

Under the pretense of having a picnic, a geologist takes his teenage daughter and 6-year-old son into the Australian outback and attempts to shoot them. When he fails, he turns the gun on himself, and the two city-bred children must contend with harsh wilderness alone. They are saved by a chance encounter with an Aboriginal boy who shows them how to survive, and in the process underscores the disharmony between nature and modern life.

The Australian Aborigines (in this film anyway) believe that this is the place where the green ants go to dream, and that if their dreams are disturbed, it will bring down disaster on us all. The Aborigines' belief is not shared by a giant mining company, which wants to tear open the soil and search for uranium.

Outlaws kidnap their 14-year-old cousin and hold her for ransom. The girl is being chaperoned by a visiting nun, who refuses to abandon her during the kidnapping.

In 1931, three Aboriginal girls escape after being plucked from their homes to be trained as domestic staff, and set off on a trek across the Outback.

An aboriginal girl is brought up by a white family that adopts her. As a young woman, she is mysteriously drawn to go "Walkabout" as people of her tribe have for hundreds of years.

Outside the Australian town of Jindabyne, local man Stuart Kane is on a fishing trip with friends when they discover the body of a murdered girl. What follows will change their lives forever.

Nine women convicts escape from a prison hell-hole and dare to create a savage world free of man.

In turn-of-the-century Australia, two criminals ingratiate themselves with a rancher in order to swindle him. However, the two partners become rivals for the affection of the rancher's beautiful daughter.

A 19th-century San Francisco detective named Tex Kinnane is sent "Down Under" to nab shyster lawyer Vincent Moller. Several comparisons are made between the American Wild West and the equally treacherous Australian outback.

Two drag queens and a transgender woman contract to perform a drag show at a resort in Alice Springs, a town in the remote Australian desert. As they head west from Sydney aboard their lavender bus, Priscilla, the three friends come to the forefront of a comedy of errors, encountering a number of strange characters, as well as incidents of homophobia, whilst widening comfort zones and finding new horizons.

A garage mechanic out in the middle of the outback gets involved with the girl friend of a jewel smuggler who is on the run.

Two strangers – one white, one black – steal a car in western NSW and head for the coast. Jack is abrasive, cunning and disparaging about Aborigines. Gary doesn’t really care – he just wants to escape. En route, they pick up Gary’s Uncle Joe, a French hitchhiker and a young woman who’s running away. Their petty crimes escalate as they go, heading towards disaster.

Australia, 1958. When a nine year old white girl is found murdered, police are quick to arrest illiterate Aborigine, Max Stuart. Under interrogation Max admits to the killing. With a legal system compromised by intimidation tactics, the skills of his two gifted but naïve defense lawyers are put to the test.

After being infected in the wake of a violent pandemic and with only 48 hours to live, a father struggles to find a new home for his baby daughter.

Accompanied only by her faithful dog and four camels, an Australian satisfies her craving for solitude by embarking on a solo trip across the desert from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean.

In a remote corner of the wild country, a bloody war rages. Travis is a bounty hunter with one last hope of redemption. Gutjuk is a young Indigenous man trying to save the last of his family. Together they embark on a manhunt, which unravels a secret that ultimately pits them against each other.

In a remote Aboriginal community, 10 year old Daniel yearns to be a gangster, like the male role models in his life. Skipping school, getting into fights and running drugs for Linden, who leads the main gang in town.

Indigenous Detective Jay Swan arrives in the frontier town of Goldstone on a missing persons inquiry. What seems like a simple investigation unearths an intricate web of crime, corruption, human trafficking, and coordinated exploitation of indigenous people’s land. Jay must bury his differences with young local cop Josh, so together they can bring justice to Goldstone.

Samson and Delilah's world is small- an isolated community in the Central Australian desert. When tragedy strikes they turn their backs on home and embark on a journey of survival. Lost, unwanted and alone the discover that life isn't always fair, but love never judges.

A story within a story within a story. In Australia's Northern Territory, an Aboriginal narrator tells a story about his ancestors on a goose hunt. A youngster on the hunt is being tempted to adultery with his elder brother's wife, so an elder tells him a story from the mythical past about how evil can slip in and cause havoc unless prevented by virtue according to customary tribal law.

Ray Lorkin, chief lawman in the tiny rural settlement of Wala Wala, Australia, fears that long-simmering tensions between the area's aborigine natives and white settlers are on the verge of erupting. When it's discovered that Kate, the white wife of local schoolteacher Les, has despoiled a sacred site by secretly meeting her aborigine lover, Tony, there, a shocking murder threatens to rip the small town apart.

Based on the well-loved Australian classic by Mrs. Aeneas Gunn, this is the remarkable true story of Jeannie Gunn, a woman who fought to overcome sexual and racial prejudice amid the harsh beauties of the outback. Leaving her Melbourne existence for a new life on her husband's isolated ranch, Jeannie's feisty, good-natured attitude soon wins over the misogynistic stockmen, but she faces a much tougher challenge in trying to change their racist attitudes towards the indigenous aboriginal population.

A story based on true events about two explorers on a doomed journey trying to cross Australia on foot in the 19 century.

Based on the true story of a young girl who went missing in the Australian outback in 1932.

After the death of his mother, teenage Danny visits his father Matt Malloy on a lonesome farm in Australia, where he lives with a girlfriend and her daughter Stevie. The farm has been going bad lately, so Matt starts smuggling Marijuana for a drug connection. When Danny joins him on one of his flights, the two-seater crashes in the middle of nowhere. Since his father is wounded, he has to conquer the jungle alone in search for help.

In 1825, Clare, a 21-year-old Irish convict, chases a British soldier through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. She enlists the services of an Aboriginal tracker who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.

In the Australian outback, a park ranger and two local guides set out to track down a giant crocodile that has been killing and eating the local populace..

Travis, a jaded detective, arrives in the remote outback town of Limbo to investigate the cold case murder of local Indigenous girl Charlotte Hayes 20 years ago. As truths about the murder begin to unfold, the detective gains a new insight into the unsolved case.

Somewhere in Australia in the early 20th century outback, an Aboriginal man is accused of murdering a white woman. Three white men are on a mission to capture him with the help of an experienced Indigenous man.

Blackfella Charlie is getting older, and he's out of sorts. The intervention is making life more difficult on his remote community, what with the proper policing of whitefella laws that don't generally make much sense, and Charlie's kin and ken seeming more interested in going along with things than doing anything about it. So Charlie takes off, to live the old way, but in doing so sets off a chain of events in his life that has him return to his community chastened, and somewhat the wiser.

Imagine what it would be like if black settlers arrived to settle a continent inhabited by white natives? In 1788, the first white settlers arrived in Botany Bay to begin the process of white colonisation of Australia. But in Babakiueria, the roles are reversed in a delightful and light-hearted look at colonisation of a different kind. This satirical examination of black-white relations in Australia first screened on ABC TV in 1986 to widespread acclaim with both critics and audiences alike. This is the story of the fictitious land of Babakiueria, where white people are the minority and must obey black laws. Aboriginal actors Michelle Torres and Bob Maza (Heartland) and supported by a number of familiar faces from the time, including Cecily Polson (E-Street) and Tony Barry, who starred in major ABC-TV hits such as I Can Jump Puddles and his Penguin award-winning Scales of Justice. Babakiueria was awarded the United Nations Media Peace Prize in 1987.

A family buy land set around a water hole in a remote location, that is occupied by native Australians. The two groups clash.

The Maralinga people survive aggressive colonisation, including dispossession to enable atomic testing, and through their tenacious spirit and cultural strength fight to retain their country.

Adapted from the stage production of the same name, 'Basically Black' is a sketch comedy TV pilot that aired in 1973, and due to the provocative racial content, ABC never produced another episode. It stands as a historical milestone, the first television program and stage play completely created and written by Aboriginal Australians.