Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
Directors
Rolf de Heer,
Peter Djigirr
Cast
Crusoe Kurddal,
Jamie Gulpilil,
Richard Birrinbirrin,
David Gulpilil,
Peter Minygululu,
Frances Djulibing
Genre
Adventure,
Comedy,
Drama
In Australia's Northern Territory, an aboriginal man tells us a story of his people and his land. The story is about their ancestors, an older man, Minygululu, who has three wives and realizes that his younger brother Dayindi may try to steal away the youngest wife.
Ten Canoes is a valuable and endlessly fascinating film about the Aboriginal culture in Australia. Peter Djigirr and Rolf de Here collaborate to craft a story that teaches the audience about traditional aboriginal storytelling. Ten Canoes connects this age old art form to the 21st century unlike any other film.
Village Voice
To watch this movie (shot in breathtaking widescreen by cinematographer Ian Jones) is to enter into a whole new language of symbols and meaning, the likes of which I have rarely encountered in cinema outside of the African tribal films of Ousmane Sembene.
Variety
Anthropology and entertainment are marvelously married in Rolf de Heer's Ten Canoes. The first feature in an Australian Aboriginal language feels authentic to the core as it tells a cautionary tale set 1,000 years ago.
Variety by Richard Kuipers
Anthropology and entertainment are marvelously married in Rolf de Heer's Ten Canoes. The first feature in an Australian Aboriginal language feels authentic to the core as it tells a cautionary tale set 1,000 years ago.
Village Voice by Scott Foundas
To watch this movie (shot in breathtaking widescreen by cinematographer Ian Jones) is to enter into a whole new language of symbols and meaning, the likes of which I have rarely encountered in cinema outside of the African tribal films of Ousmane Sembene.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
A marvel of warm collaboration and shared jokes about husbands and wives, shot both in dreamscape color and pristine black and white.
Washington Post by Desson Thomson
Its mixture of wisdom and whimsy -- exemplified by the movie's unnamed and occasionally cheeky narrator -- makes this Australian movie feel as timeless as it is timely. And instead of feeling dutifully cultural as we immerse ourselves in this story, we're genuinely intrigued, touched and even amused.
The Hollywood Reporter
In telling this ancient story with style and humor, de Heer and his Aboriginal collaborators promote cultural understanding and acceptance by stealth, if you will.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
There is nothing more enthralling than a good yarn, and Ten Canoes interweaves two versions of the same story, one filmed in black and white and set a thousand years ago, and an even older one, filmed in color and set in a mythic, prehistoric past.
The Hollywood Reporter by Megan Lehmann
In telling this ancient story with style and humor, de Heer and his Aboriginal collaborators promote cultural understanding and acceptance by stealth, if you will.
The A.V. Club by Noel Murray
Like a lot of folk tales, Ten Canoes peters out into something more prosaic than profound, but it flows like water, and has a deceptively gentle pull that proves hard to escape.
Portland Oregonian by M. E. Russell
Despite dancing between a story and a story within a story, something seems simple and effortless about Ten Canoes. Director Rolf de Heer and his all-Yolngu cast offer a take on tribal life that's warm, funny and powerfully alive.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Bill White
A top-flight example of cinematic storytelling, thanks in large part to the unusual narration, spoken in English by David Gulpilil.
Empire
Ten Canoes is a rare and valuable movie, providing fascinating insight into another culture without pandering or being stuffy. Seek it out -- swim if you have to.
Salon by Andrew O'Hehir
It's a fascinating immersion within a highly ritualized Stone Age oral culture that, at least according to tradition, existed almost unchanged for thousands of years before the European arrival.
Chicago Reader by Andrea Gronvall
Inspired by anthropologist Donald Thomson's early-20th-century photographs, this collaboration between a Western filmmaker and the native people of Ramingining is an impressive achievement of ethnographic cinema.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey
A rollicking good story set a millennium ago among Australian aborigines, Ten Canoes is one of those cultural-building exercises that genuinely entertains.
TV Guide Magazine by Maitland McDonagh
Funny, perceptive, bawdy, tragic and philosophical, pretty much everything a viewer -- or a listener -- could ask for.
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