Warwick Thornton’s 2009 film Samson and Delilah is an astonishing achievement in Australian Indigenous cinema and, in a global context, Fourth Cinema. Combining the realism of violence and dispossession within Central Desert Indigenous communities, particularly violence against women and minors, with sharp ground–level cinematography and extensive use of silence, the film builds on a recent wave of experimental Indigenous film–making to refract narratives of Indigenous experience in striking ways. That it performs such an acute critique of cultural marginalization and of its representation in film culture by means of expert filmic technique is distinction enough. That it accomplishes such a nuanced and intelligent response to a history of dispossession and of marginal cultural representation with two first–time screen actors, Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson, is astonishing. Their subtle performances – McNamara’s character makes only one utterance, his name, during the entire film – become magnetic embodiments of their narrative predicament. They situate the viewer as witness to violence and prejudice, and as an inheritor of a history of physical and spiritual violence. Rather than dwell in didacticism, the film instead liberates its characters by virtue of their resilience, having survived their trials. In placing two teenage Indigenous subjects at the heart of a feature film, Samson and Delilah is a decisive act of revelation, a gesture towards other stories yet untold.