One of the final screen projects from celebrated First Nations cultural leader Rhoda Roberts AO will make its world premiere in Adelaide this October, just months after her death at the age of 66.
Bukal Bukal, co-directed by Roberts and acclaimed Yaegl filmmaker Pauline Clague, will premiere as part of the 2026 Adelaide Film Festival, bringing the extraordinary life and work of Yidinji Elder and activist Henrietta Marrie AM to the screen.
Far from a traditional cinema premiere, the documentary will be shown under the stars at Yitpi Yartapuultiku on the banks of the Port River, as part of a free community gathering featuring conversations beside the fire.
Clague and Marrie will both attend the special event, with audiences invited to bring picnic rugs and camp chairs before the film begins at 7.30pm.
The 52-minute documentary follows Marrie, an Elder of the Gimuy Walubara clan of the Yidinji people, whose decades of advocacy have centred on Indigenous rights, cultural heritage, intellectual property and the relationship between people and Country.
At the heart of the story is Marrie’s deeply personal fight to bring her family’s ancestral cultural material home from the British Museum.
Her great-grandfather’s ceremonial headdress is among the cultural material Marrie has sought to repatriate, with the documentary following that campaign while exploring broader questions around belonging, custodianship and the ownership of Indigenous cultural heritage.
The film takes its name from Marrie’s Yidinji spirit name and totem, Bukal Bukal, the black lawyer vine, which Roberts saw as a powerful symbol for the story.
Roberts described Marrie during the film’s development as an “unexpected quiet revolutionary”, saying she wanted audiences to discover an extraordinary custodian whose work had created change well beyond her own community.
Marrie’s story also holds an interesting connection to South Australia.
As a young student, she visited the South Australian Museum and encountered cultural material that affected her deeply. Roberts later reflected on the significance of that experience in her director’s statement for the film, connecting it to Marrie’s ongoing campaign to return cultural material taken from her Country.
Her work would ultimately take her around the world, including becoming the first Aboriginal Australian appointed to a United Nations agency, where her work helped advance recognition of Indigenous traditional knowledge and cultural rights.
For Roberts, Bukal Bukal became another chapter in a career spent bringing First Nations voices and stories to national audiences.
The Widjabul Wieybal woman of the Bundjalung Nation was one of Australia’s most influential First Nations arts and media figures. Among a long list of milestones, she became the first Aboriginal host of a prime-time current affairs program, was the inaugural Head of Indigenous Programming at the Sydney Opera House and SBS’s first Elder-in-Residence. She is also credited with introducing the term “Welcome to Country” into widespread use.
Roberts died on March 21 this year following a battle with a rare form of ovarian cancer. She had continued creating and developing work during her illness, with Bukal Bukal among the screen projects she had been working on.
She worked on the documentary alongside Clague, who has spent more than three decades working across Australian film, television and First Nations storytelling.
Now, their work will reach audiences for the first time in Adelaide, with Marrie herself there to share the moment.
The world premiere will form part of Adelaide Film Festival’s (Port) Adelaide Film Festival program, with the special event running for four hours and entry free with registration.
WHAT: Bukal Bukal World Premiere and Campfire Yarns
WHERE: Yitpi Yartapuultiku, Port Adelaide
WHEN: Adelaide Film Festival, October 2026; film screening at 7.30pm
COST: Free with registration
More information and registrations via Adelaide Film Festival
