Writer-director Imogen Thomas’ debut feature “Emu Runner” has and probably will play in designated family-themed strands of film festivals, and given its story of a 9-year-old Aboriginal girl who d…
’ debut feature “Emu Runner” has and probably will play in designated family-themed strands of film festivals, and given its story of a 9-year-old Aboriginal girl who deals with grief in the wake of her mother’s death by bonding with a lone female representative of Australia’s largest native bird species, this programming strategy is to be expected.
Things appear functional for a time. Yet Gemma seems to feel the loss more acutely than her siblings and father, and soon takes not only to skipping school to visit a female emu she’s found but can never catch up with, but also to pilfering food from her neighborhood to feed the animal as well.
Aboriginal tradition holds the emu as a creator spirit, and the animal’s outline may be seen in the Southern Cross for those who know where to look. An Australian native and graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts , Thomas clearly knows what she’s doing and where she’s doing it. There’s a quiet, assured strength of vision to the film that has brought the very best out of her largely non-pro cast.
So, too, the magisterial vastness of the plains surrounding the town is captured to sobering yet beautiful effect by cameraman Michael Gibbs. Most of the emu footage was shot at a farm some four hours away, with Gibbs, editors Jenny Hicks and Nicole Norelli, and Thomas — who is also one of four “emu wranglers” listed in the credits — seamlessly blending the footage into a moving whole.
“I can’t stand being away from home,” Gemma tells the social worker around a campfire, gesturing at the night sky. “Smells are wrong and you can’t see none of this.” An essential Aboriginal truth in miniature, the sentiment is one of the many felicitous joys of “Emu Runner.”: Director, writer: Imogen Thomas. Camera , Michael Gibbs. Editors: Jenny Hicks, Nicole Norelli. Music: Ben Fink, Peter Michael Davison, Glenn Skuthorpe.
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