Angels Gather Here is a gentle, lyrical take on how past pain continues to reverberates through the generations in country Australia. What is striking about these characters is their ordinariness - the almost matter-of-fact recounting of the Trapmans’ own ‘stolen generations’ story. Black-and-white photos of Jackie’s mother at the Cootamundra Girls’ Home, just one in a row of young women clad in regulation attire, remind us that there were so many like her. When she went out to work in the homes of white people, even her meagre wages were taken from her.

The small spaces of local community halls and homes are set against the sweeping vistas of bush around the Brewarrina River and the rows of white crosses in the local cemetery. Some of these, Jackie reminds us, mark the graves of mothers who never saw their young daughters again.

It would have been good to learn more about the turnaround in Jackie’s life, from her days as a teen mum and small-town drunk, to becoming a university graduate and community organizer. This part of the story is left untold, but this does not detract from the film’s ability to make us participants in a family event that, by its sheer ordinariness, highlights how far we are as a nation from resolving historical injustices against Australia’s First Peoples.

Despite its mood of elegy, some bright threads of hope run through the Angels movie. It reminds us that Indigenous ways and culture persist, mostly unsung, in small-town Australia. We see local families fish on the banks of the Brewarrina, much as their ancestors did. And through Jackie’s actions, we are reminded that, while we campaign for constitutional reforms, the ghosts of past injustices are also laid to rest through personal acts of resistance and reparation.

• Angels Gather Here will screen at Armagh, 226 Kooyong Road, Toorak, VIC 3142 on Friday 30 August 2019. For more information about IofCA’s Winter Film Series, contact Delia Paul