Daniel (Daniel Connors), the Aboriginal Australian protagonist in Ivan Sen’s film Toomelah, gets a warning from his mother. “Don’t look like that, you look like your father,” she says as he drinks water out of an exterior faucet even if there’s water inside. There aren’t a lot of options, activity wise for the young boy. One who lives in the titular island outside of school. He skips school to hang out with his mother’s drug dealer, Linden (Christopher Edwards). That’s until Bruce (Dean Daley-Jones), comes out of prison and becomes the island’s rival dealer. He even starts becoming Daniel’s mother’s drug dealer and boyfriend, shaking up the island’s already precarious dynamic.

Aside from being the protagonist, Daniel is obviously the film’s version of the stand-in for a presumably settler audience. Through him we see the bare bones of a community that the colonial government, under serving its Aboriginal people. There are a lot of shots and counter shots of Daniel looking out of windows to watch Linden’s actions. During one of those scenes, he sees Linden successfully bamboozle the cops who probably don’t care to do anything. Those who caught this film during festivals wrote about Ivan Sen’s use of documentary style, soft film-making. This style isn’t for everyone, but it is for me, as Toomelah‘s camerawork gives it an authenticity.

Through Toomelah, Ivan Sen is technically giving us a crime drama but thankfully without the genre’s stressful aura. Even that scene when Daniel and Linden follow Bruce’s car around can give us half and half. One the one hand, Bruce’s imposing muscular figure can just approach them, asking why they’re following him. On the other hand, that scene plays like many here when Linden’s crew serves as a Greek chorus speculating on Bruce’s Deals. Maybe the most stressful thing on here, if it counts, involves Daniel not being at school all day. But the rest of the film, again, is him hanging out with Linden but giving those hangouts a stark enough aura.

Toomelah features actors with their first and and maybe last performances, with the exception of its three leads. Child actors are usually dice rolls but Connors, as part of his job, captures a range of actions and emotions. Most of the critics wrote about how Connors evinces the anger of a child who doesn’t belong anywhere. While that’s true, he also shows curiosity during scenes where all he does is observe what Linden’s doing. That scene with him and Bruce in the car has him effortlessly showing fear towards the film’s villain. A normally relaxed film, it knows to show its viewers when things get real for its mostly innocent protagonist.

Stream Toomelah on OVID as part of its double feature mini retro on Ivan Sen’s work.