BBFF25 Journey Home, David Gulpilil

Before Australia’s most renowned Indigenous actor David Gulpilil passed away in South Australia in 2021, he made his family promise to lay him to rest on his Homeland of Gupulul in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. A Yolŋu man, David Gulpilil was an acclaimed actor who lived a tribal existence in Arnhem Land’s Arafura Swamp before starring in his first film ‘Walkabout’ which screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971. He was the first Australian First Nations actor to blaze a trail internationally. David Gulpilil constantly navigated two-worlds, yet the deeper side of his Yolŋu culture was rarely in the spotlight. As David Gulpilil journeys back to the place of his birth, we’re given rare insight into Yolŋu culture as his family take on the huge logistical challenge spanning over four and a half thousand kilometres by vehicles, planes, boats, on foot, and by helicopter, and across many months waiting for the right seasonal conditions. This final chapter of David Gulpilil’s incredible story, where ancestral Djan’kawu sisters are invoked to mark the spot for his grave, and clan leaders enact timeless song cycles to guide his spirit safely back to the place of its beginning, is a remarkable homecoming.