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The Guardian Nov 10, 2013
Sustainable business feature: The mismatch between indigenous communities and mining wealth
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Screen Daily Nov 9, 2013
Veteran journalist and BAFTA-winning filmmaker John Pilger returns to the screen with new documentary Utopia, about the plight of indigenous Australians.
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Australian Times Nov 8, 2013
Interview: John Pilger exposes Australia's shocking secret in Utopia
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TNT Magazine Nov 8, 2013
Australia's dirtiest secret: John Pilger's new film shines a light on the treatment of Australia's Aboriginals
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Dog and Wolf ★★★ Nov 1, 2013
Veteran documentary filmmaker John Pilger’s latest, Utopia, is a hard-hitting investigation into modern Australia’s commitment to its indigenous communities.
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Blogcritics Nov 5, 2013
Utopia is certainly worth watching and indeed, it might be worth watching more than once.
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Camden Review Nov 5, 2013
John Pilger returns to his homeland Australia to uncover the story of a country that suffers from an appalling social and economic apartheid.
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Close-Up Film Nov 5, 2013
One of the most extraordinary films about Australia. This is Utopia, an epic production by the Emmy and Bafta winning film-maker and journalist John Pilger.
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Time Out ★★★★ Nov 6, 2013
Veteran Australian journalist John Pilger offers an bloodboiling assessment of his homeland’s relationship with its indigenous people.
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The List ★★★★ Nov 6, 2013
Pilger made Utopia to make Australians sit up and listen. It's no-nonsense, provocative, powerful and sickening stuff.
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The Prisma Nov 5, 2013
The film is an important advocate for their cause, and provides the Aboriginal peoples with a voice of their own.
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Total: Spec ★★★★ Nov 5, 2013
Utopia is an impassioned, superbly put together polemic fuelled by Pilger’s considerable ire. You are virtually guaranteed to be appalled by the movie’s contents...
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Rooms Magazine Nov 5, 2013
Hard-line Australian journalist John Pilger asks important questions concerning one of the most poverty-stricken areas in the world in his new documentary feature – Utopia.
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Frost Magazine Nov 5, 2013
Pilger's voice is a calm yet impassioned one and it deserves to be heard in this extraordinary film.
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heyuguys.co.uk Nov 5, 2013
This is a staggering, furious, essential film. It will dishearten you, yet it must be seen.
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Broken Shark Nov 5, 2013
A persistent documentary maker who has a firm grasp on what is relevant... Utopia is one of the most necessary documentaries I have seen in some time.
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Filmoria ★★★★ Nov 5, 2013
Utopia has a powerful message to share and deserves to be seen in every Australian school.
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Emmanuil Papavasileiou Nov 5, 2013
Utopia is an extraordinary documentary that touches on the core issue of racism in the Australian community.
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Britflicks ★★★★★ Nov 5, 2013
Utopia is a film which should be seen by as many people as possible.
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Film Juice ★★★ Nov 5, 2013
Powerful and revealing portrait of John Pilger's native country’s history.
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ViewLondon ★★★★ Nov 5, 2013
Utopia is an eye-opening and memorable documentary that’s definitely worth seeking out.
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Filmuforia ★★★★★ Nov 5, 2013
This well-paced and immersive documentary is well worth watching
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The London Film Review ★★★★ Nov 5, 2013
John Pilger's deeply moving and shocking documentary about one of Australia's best kep secrets.
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The Hollywood News Nov 5, 2013
UTOPIA is both a personal journey and universal story of power and resistance.
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Little White Lies Nov 1, 2013
A film which does shove a contemporary atrocity under our noses.
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New Matilda Jan 16, 2014
John Pilger's new film, Utopia, is a chilling expose of our collective failure to address the ongoing crimes committed against Indigenous Australians, writes Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon.
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The Conversation Jan 16, 2014
It was more than two decades ago when I saw John Pilger’s 1986 documentary 'The Secret Country' for the first time. I was a 17-year-old Aboriginal male suffering the indignity of public housing Australia. My identity came with a sense of collective oppression that turned my indignity into both resistance and motivation.
Such feelings of resistance became an empowering experience that lead to a pursuit of justice identified through education. Now, almost 30 years later, I find myself part of the middle class. I own my house. My children have all attended private schools and it is easy to believe that things are improving.
I have John Pilger and his latest documentary 'Utopia', which premieres in Australia today, to remind me that it hasn’t.
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Amy McGuire Jan 17, 2014
Every year Australia tries to wash away its hidden history with displays of overt nationalism. On January 26th , Australians plant their union jacks in parks and beaches across the country, or on the faces of small children who are taught nothing about what the symbol means to those people this nation believed it conquered.For the majority of them, there has only been one name for the date – Australia Day.
But for the first peoples, there have been several. Survival Day, Invasion Day, Sovereignty Day, each word loaded with the pain of 200 years of dispossession that has left the first peoples of this land impoverished but, against the odds, remarkably strong. My preferred name for January 26th, however, was one of its earliest – the Day of Mourning.
On this day, First Nations peoples mourn the loss of land, of their children, of their wages, of their remains. They mourn the loss of control over their own future. Australians may want us to ‘get over it’, to stop being so ‘sensitive’. But then, why do we still set aside a day of remembrance on ANZAC Day to commemorate those who risked their lives at war? And why don’t we acknowledge the brave Aboriginal fighters who sacrificed everything in the frontier wars?
A couple of years ago I visited a site of extreme significance to my nation – the Darumbal people, whose homeland takes in Rockhampton in Central Queensland. About a 30 minute drive from the town, there is a mountain which was for decades known as “Mt Wheeler”; coincidentally the same name as the man – Sir Frederick Wheeler - who in the 19th century chased a mob of Darumbal people up to the top and herded them off like sheep. As I gazed up at that sheer cliff face, I imagined the pleading faces of a people who would never get justice for those crimes, although the evidence of their spilled blood is passed down by stories and even in official documents at the time.
Today that site is unmarked. Scattered rubbish left by campers litter its base. The Darumbal people renamed this sacred initiation site – Gawula. But Australians are blind to the crimes that occurred there. Would we treat the massacre site of any other people this way? Would we forget so easily? And yet its one massacre site amongst thousands across Australia. Do you know the ground you walk on?
This month, internationally renowned journalist John Pilger released his new film Utopia in Australia. What he uncovers is an ignored truth. Despite the magnificent wealth of this country, its first peoples have inherited a legacy of disadvantage that has compounded since the very first days of invasion. It’s compounded by government neglect and apathy, by watered down promises replacing land rights with “reconciliation” and the failure to recognise the ability of Aboriginal people to control their own lives, to grant them true self-determination.
Australia is locking up Aboriginal people at horrific rates, and yet still cutting funding to Aboriginal legal aid services. It lets its media off for demonising Aboriginal people, and even gives them a Logie for it. It shamefully allows the 10-year extension of one of the most racist policies in Australia’s history – the NT intervention, and claims its for ‘their’ own good. It will not have any evidence of the frontier wars in the Australian War Memorial, but is content to represent them as gargoyles alongside wildlife on the walls of the national monument.
This shameful history is laid bare in Utopia.
But the film also showcases the strength and resilience of Aboriginal people. One of my favourite quotes from Utopia is made by Anmatyerr elder Rosalie Kunoth Monks:“What amazes me is there is not that hatred, because that’s beneath our dignity to hate people. We have not got that… but us old people have to start thinking about righting the wrong, the awful wrong that continues to happen to us an ours.”
That’s what we are fighting for on January 26th.
Amy McGuire is a Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist and Editor of Tracker Magazine. She was a researcher on John Pilger’s Utopia. -
Al Jazeera Jan 25, 2014
Earlier in January, 4,000 people amassed in a Sydney park for the launch of Utopia, the fourth documentary on the plight of indigenous Australians by London-based journalist John Pilger. It's named after a barren Aboriginal homeland in the Northern Territory visited by Pilger: a place of abject poverty where people live in dilapidated homes made of cancer-causing asbestos; where kitchens, bathrooms, running water, sanitation and electricity do not exist; where children sleep head-to-toe on soiled, broken mattresses; and where cockroaches crawl into their ears...
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Adam Goodes, Champion Sydney footballer and 2014 Australian of the Year Feb 9, 2014
I am an urban Aboriginal man; I wasn't brought up into my culture, I don't have my language, nor my kinship system to live by. My mum was part of the stolen generations and, because of this, my mum and her three boys never learnt what it meant to be Aboriginal.
Utopia has shown me how, over 225 years, the Europeans, and now the governments that run our country, have raped, killed and stolen from my people for their own benefit. The total injustices that have been played out since colonisation are absolutely shameful, and I now find it hard to say I am proud to be Australian.
Australia has a very black past; Utopia shows real-life stories of what has happened over the past 225 years. I cried like I had lost a family member on three occasions watching this film - a must-see for all Australians.
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Sol Bellear, Sydney Morning Herald Mar 2, 2014
Pilger's message to white Australia cannot be dismissed
Mainstream Australia has long lacked a real education about Aboriginal people, about our shared history, and this nation's brutal past. Fortunately, there's a simple way in – an opportunity to get a "punter's guide" to the truth about the treatment of Aboriginal Australians.
John Pilger's latest film, Utopia - a 110-minute feature length documentary more than two years in the making - should be required viewing for all Australians, in particular lawmakers.READ MORE
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Adam Goodes Mar 3, 2014
White silence cannot dim the heroes of Utopia
For the last few weeks, I've seen a film bring together Aboriginal people all over Australia. The buzz around Utopia - a documentary by John Pilger - has been unprecedented. Some 4000 people attended the open-air premiere in Redfern last month - both indigenous and non-indigenous Australians - and yet little appeared in the media about an event that the people of Redfern say was a ''first''. This silence has since been broken by a couple of commentators whose aggression seemed a cover for their hostility to the truth about Aboriginal people.READ MORE
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Herald Sun & Sydney Daily Telegraph ★★★★★ May 28, 2014
This film from journalist John Pilger forensically dissects decades of official racism, one bungled policy at a time. This is the most eviscerating public document on the state of Aboriginal Australians I can recall. Pilger asks some urgent health and social questions before looking at incarceration rates and death in custody, land rights and mining, the removal of babies and what exactly did the Rudd apology change. But the highlight is probably Pilger’s unravelling of the vast lie behind the Howard government NT intervention.
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Cine Vue ★★★★★ Nov 18, 2013
Pilger stands apart from the crowd as a documentarian ... when it comes to experience and gravitas, he's second to none
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John Pilger writes in The Guardian Nov 5, 2013
John Pilger describes the suppression of Australia's bloodied history while veneration for its colonial wars and the rise of militarism excludes the true story of the 'the greatest expropriation of land in world history'.
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Front Row Review ★★★½ Nov 1, 2013
A convincingly powerful spark of an all-too-infrequently discussed issue
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The Irish Times ★★★ Nov 12, 2013
In his revealing new documentary ‘Utopia’, distinguished journalist John Pilger paints a bleak picture of life for the aboriginal people of his native Australia
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The Guardian ★★★★ Nov 18, 2013
This powerful film by John Pilger looks at the awful truth behind white Australia's dysfunctional relationship with Indigenous Australians
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The Independent ★★★ Nov 14, 2013
John Pilger's documentary reveals 'shocking poverty' of Australia's indigenous communities
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Sight and Sound Nov 1, 2013
John Pilger’s latest documentary repeatedly examines the disjuncture between the utopian fantasy of white Australia and the dystopian fantasy on which it is built
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The Express ★★★★ Nov 15, 2013
A shocking and important piece of investigative journalism
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Evening Standard ★★★ Nov 11, 2013
If you want to see corruption in the raw, track down Utopia
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Total Film ★★★★ Nov 17, 2013
This powerful documentary from John Pilger and Alan Lowery highlights the plight of indigenous Aussies.
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The Times ★★★★ Nov 16, 2013
In Utopia the veteran campaigning journalist John Pilger returns to his native Australia to investigate the plight of the Aboriginal people.
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The Metro ★★★★ Nov 17, 2013
As impassioned and partisan as you’d expect from Pilger, a committed cage-rattler, it’s confrontational, eye-opening and saddening viewing.
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