The Family and the Zombie

The Family and the Zombie combines science fiction, horror, comedy and documentary to portray an Indigenous Australian family facing the consequences of the ecological crisis and colonialism. Guided by ancestral knowledge, the protagonists seek to resist and imagine new futures. The film, produced by the Karrabing Film Collective—which brings together more than 50 Indigenous people from Western Australia—symbolically explores the eternal struggle between the continuity of memory, culture and connection to ancestors, and the ‘undead’ legacies of colonial extractivism. Elizabeth Povinelli, the collective’s only non-Indigenous member, plays the zombie who gives the film its title.