New Zealand’s celebrated actor Sam Neill, who plays the role of a benevolent rural preacher with an opportunity to showcase his vocal talents, argued in an interview that the whole world should hear about Australia’s difficult, at times tragic, history. That is exactly the theme of the directorial debut of Warwick Thornton, a respected director/cinematographer of Aboriginal roots who was also responsible for the film’s photography, alongside his son. The story is told within the framework of genre cinema it’s a period Outback Western, and in that reality (northern Australia, 1920s) distinctions between the good and the bad are very clear-cut. The protagonist, Sam Kelly (a great performance by non-pro Hamilton Morris), who belongs to the former category, shoots a representative of the latter a white colonizer in self-defense. Sam becomes a wanted criminal, on the run with his pregnant wife. They’re tracked and hunted by a party led by the experienced sergeant Fletcher (played by the celebrated Australian actor Bryan Brown).  Sweet Country is both a painful history lesson and a cautionary tale to learn from mistakes of the past.