Yurlu | Country

Yaara Bou Melhem (Dir), 79 minutes, Australia, Western New York Premiere

A vivid ode to land and an intimate, inspiring portrait of an Indigenous Elder’s final year as he fights to reclaim his homeland, scarred by the largest contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere.

Banjima Elder Maitland Parker calls his yurlu (homeland) in the Pilbara region of Western Australia “poison country”; this haunting truth is etched into his body as he lives with terminal mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer resulting from asbestos exposure. Six decades prior, the Wittenoom mines left behind more than three million tonnes of waste rock laced with deadly asbestos fibres, turning 46,840 hectares of Banjima Country – an area eight times the size of Manhattan – into a toxic exclusion zone. Today, Aboriginal communities in Western Australia have the world’s highest mortality rate from mesothelioma. Yurlu | Country follows Maitland as he confronts government inaction and corporate greed in the hope of allowing his people to reconnect with and heal their ancestral lands.

This powerful documentary bears witness to Australia’s very own – albeit largely unknown – Chernobyl-style disaster. Braiding imagery of beautiful yet contaminated terrain with poignant interviews and damning archival footage, the film stands as a testament to First Nations resilience amid ongoing dispossession, and is a rousing call to action to redress the cultural, environmental and physical wounds caused by colonisation and industry.