SUKUNDIMI WALKS BEFORE ME

The Sepik River is the mother line for Papua New Guinea communities.

Winding through mountains and rainforests, she is the crucial vertebrae connecting and supporting the region’s rare biodiversity and spiritual consciousness.

But her livelihood and her communities are threatened by the proposal of a copper-gold mine being built near her waters, which could extract, erode and pollute an environment that she has sustained for millennia. 

The children of this river, led by Manu Peni, create a grassroots campaign to stop the mine from being built, resisting the forces of colonial bureaucracy and Western narratives of ‘development’ by invoking the Spirit of the river and indigenous knowledge. 

Sukundimi Walks Before Me explores this existential fight through lyrical expressions of existence, resistance and life along the mother river.

Written by director Matasila Freshwater 

Sukundimi Walks Before Me is nominated in the Documentary Australia Award for Australian Documentary and the Sustainable Future Award