Utopia

Utopia chronicles filmmaker John Pilger’s investigation into the plight of Aboriginal people in Australia. Pilger journeys to the town of Utopia, one of the most impoverished areas in the country, where an Aboriginal community lives in abject squalor. Many are forced to live in overcrowded huts made of asbestos, suffering from disease and police brutality.

The film argues that, despite living within one of the richest countries in the world, Aboriginal people and their lands have been exploited and stripped of resources. This is made particularly apparent when Pilger travels to Rottnest Island in Western Australia, where Aboriginal people were once brutally incarcerated. Today, the same site is home to a luxury hotel, while the secrets of the island’s dark history remain buried from its wealthy clientele. Utopia reveals a crisis on a scale that matches, or even exceeds, apartheid.