Brewarrina on the Big Screen

Brewarrina was the star at an international film festival last week, when the movie Emu Runner premiered in Toronto.

Emu Runner was shot entirely at Brewarrina, with local actors taking the starring roles, a local musician providing the score and the Brewarrina community filling many other roles on location.

Directed by Imogen Thomas, Emu Runner follows the story of nine-year-old Gem (Rhae-Kye Waites) whose mother dies unexpectedly.

She copes with the loss by bonding with a wild emu, while her father struggles to keep his three children together.

As Gem connects with her ancestors’ totem animal — a male emu rearing its chicks — her behaviour attracts the attention of an over-eager social worker who misinterprets grief for parental neglect.

Emu Runner has been more than a decade in the making and one of the key people who helped bring it to an audience is local indigenous educator, Frayne Barker.

Frayne met Imogen when she visited in 2003 and worked with her on her first film, Mixed Bag.

Read more in the printed edition of the Western Herald.