Director Andrijana Stojković
Rated G
Score 5/6

Serbian-Australian writer Wongar lives a secluded life taking care of his 6 dingoes for which he believes embody the spirits of his tragically lost Aboriginal family.

It is time for the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival, so before we get to far into things there is going to be a series of reviews of documentaries featured in the festival and if you’re wondering this year’s festival is going to be an online festival.

I certainly wasn’t expecting the filmmakers to open Wongar the way that they did. For some reason the first maybe two minutes of the documentary I found myself thinking of the 2001 movie Moulin Rouge, Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the music video for The White Stripes’ Hardest Button To Button. Of the documentaries I have seen, Wongar is the documentary that is most unlike a documentary because there is no commentary by the filmmakers and only Wongar’s voice-over reading from his own work. There is also the use by the filmmakers of images from an Aboriginal theatre piece, as interesting as this piece I would have liked to have liked it if the filmmakers had told the audience about the meaning of the theatre piece. I suppose it could be argued that by not using any commentary, Wognar is a documentary in its purest form because it doesn’t hold you by the hand and it allows the viewer to form their own opinion without being biased by the filmmaker’s opinion. The information in the documentaries’ epilogue left me wondering if the director will ever make another film about Wongar.