Rabbit-Proof Fence (2003)

In a shameful chapter of Australia's history, the government forcibly removed ''half-caste'' children from their families in order to ''breed out'' their blackness (and, conveniently, the Aboriginal race). Rabbit-Proof Fence, an immensely moving version of a true story, follows three young girls who have been taken from their family who escape their internment camp and embark on a heroic journey by foot to their home some 1,500 miles away. There's a spareness to director Phillip Noyce's film -- the sere landscape, the simple storyline, the nonprofessional-actor children's clipped, minimal dialogue -- that leaves it wide open, as if minimizing the proportions of the narrative is the only way to see its enormity.