Sukundimi Walks Before Me

In 2016, a global mining company submitted a plan to the Papua New Guinea government to build a massive mine near the Sepik's waters. The scheme has the potential to pollute this biodiversity hotspot, destroying the environment, livelihood and wellbeing of the Sepik people. Emmanuel (Manu) Peni leads his community in a grassroots resistence, invoking Indigenous and ancestral knowledge against the forces of colonial bureaucracy and Western development. In following the campaign, the filmmakers, Matasila Freshwater (Vai, SFF 2019) and Lachlan McLeod, explore the Sepik people's spiritual connection to their natural world. As Manu explains, "the living river, this is our identity, it is us, it runs inside me".