Review: Oranges and Sunshine

Oranges and Sunshine
Dir. Jim Loach
Year: 2011
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 105mins

When Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence – his searing portrayal of the plight of the stolen generation – was released in 2002 it had a vast and immediate impact. Thankfully, it was also a great movie made by a director at the peak of his talents and was made at a time that allowed it to have the strongest power. Now, in 2011, we get another socially conscious movie attempting to publicise a horrible injustice inflicted upon children, this time by the British government’s forced relocation of children to Australia. Oranges and Sunshine, based on the non-fiction novel Empty Cradles by British social worker Margaret Humphrys, is not the exceptional piece of filmmaking that Rabbit-Proof Fence was, but it is nevertheless a moving film about a disgraceful act that had been forgotten to the annals of history for far too long.

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It's been good to see this movie do well at the box office, alongside the more boutique successes of Snowtown (review) and Mrs Carey's Concert (review) has been good to see in a year where so many other local product has floundered. Let's hope it continues.