Dujuan Hoosan is a precocious 10-year-old from Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Australia, considered a healer by his Arrernte tribe and a delinquent by his colonialist-minded school. For more than two years, Australian documentarian Maya Newell followed Dujuan, capturing both quotidian moments and broader patterns of racism, with special focus on the educational and juvenile detention systems. Working with a mixed indigenous/non-indigenous team, Newell crafted an observational documentary that is neither didactic nor polemical, but makes its points just by sticking close to Dujuan. The film has been shown to the Australian Parliament and the United Nations in Geneva, where Dujuan was the youngest person ever to address the UN’s Human Rights Council. […]

Published in Documentary magazine on September 21, 2020.