A vivid ode to the land and an intimate portrait of an Indigenous Eder’s final year as he strives to preserve his culture and heal his homelands, scarred by the largest contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere.
A vivid ode to land and an intimate, inspiring portrait of an Indigenous Elder’s final year as he fights to reclaim his homeland, scarred by the largest contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere.
Banjima Elder Maitland Parker calls his yurlu (homeland) in the Pilbara region of Western Australia “poison country”; this haunting truth is etched into his body as he lives with terminal mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer resulting from asbestos exposure. Six decades prior, the Wittenoom mines left behind more than three million tonnes of waste rock laced with deadly asbestos fibres, turning 46,840 hectares of Banjima Country – an area eight times the size of Manhattan – into a toxic exclusion zone. Today, Aboriginal communities in Western Australia have the world’s highest mortality rate from mesothelioma. Yurlu | Country follows Maitland as he confronts government inaction and corporate greed in the hope of allowing his people to reconnect with and heal their ancestral lands.
Directed by two-time UN Media Peace Award and five-time Walkley Award winner Yaara Bou Melhem, who worked closely with Parker and his family, this powerful documentary bears witness to Australia’s very own – albeit largely unknown – Chernobyl-style disaster. Braiding imagery of beautiful yet contaminated terrain with poignant interviews and damning archival footage, the film stands as a testament to First Nations resilience amid ongoing dispossession, and is a rousing call to action to redress the cultural, environmental and physical wounds caused by colonisation and industry.
Yaara Bou Melhem is an award-winning filmmaker based in Sydney, Australia whose work has received two UN Media Peace Awards, two New York Film & Television Festival Awards and five Walkley Awards.
Yaara’s wrote, directed and produced feature-length documentary, UNSEEN SKIES (2021) which interrogates the inner workings of mass surveillance, computer vision and artificial intelligence. Production partners include Participant (USA). It was nominated for Best Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival and Sydney Film Festival and is now represented by Magnolia International after a successful film festival run.
Yaara has also directed and produced documentary shorts including WAR ON TRUTH (2019) about Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Maria Ressa and the Filipino editor’s global campaign against disinformation. She recently wrote, directed and co-produced THE WHITELEY ART SCANDAL (2023), a 2 x 1hr series about one of Australia’s biggest art crime fraud trials for the ABC.
Yaara turned to filmmaking after 15-years as a long-form broadcast journalist working for some of the most acclaimed international current affairs programs including SBS Dateline, ABC Foreign Correspondent and 101 East, Al Jazeera English. She holds degrees in Journalism and Law.
World Premiere - Sydney Film Festival (2025), Official Selection - Finalist for Documentary Australia Award (June, 2025)
International Premiere - Doc Edge (2025), Winner - The Edge of Impact (July, 2025)
Buffalo International Film Festival - Winner - Best International Feature Documentary (Oct, 2025)
Melbourne International Film Festival (August, 2025)
