A short film clocking in at sixteen minutes, “Brolga” could be overlooked in the way that most short stories flit by. May I suggest you pay heed to this minor gem from Australia auteur Adrian Powers. Resurrecting an ancient indigenous origin story about a graceful dancer morphing into a graceful brolga, but placing the story into a dystopian world of ferals fleeing killers, Brolga offers a perfectly structured story within a sumptuous, brooding, post-civilization world lit up by Tim Tregoning’s cinematography and Matt Ruduck’s score. The leads are played memorably by James Saunders and Tarnie Coupland. Brolga may well be brief but it resonates and I, for one, cannot wait for the next creation of Adrian Powers.
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