Billy’s Christmas

New Zealand 2007 / 75min.
Director Neil Parker / Producer Neil Parker, Christine Parker

How do you walk off land that has nurtured and defined your family for generations but is now just dry, choking desert?

In this heroic look at the human face of climate change, it is Christmas in the Outback, and the Loughnan family are six years into Australia’s worst drought in living memory. Christmas in this parched corner of the world is very short on snow and rain, and the only hot fires around rage through the tinder-dry bush decimating the already punished land and the lives of those who depend upon it.

Billy’s Christmas is a deeply affecting portrait of Billy and Barbara, descendants of families intrinsically linked for generations to a land that is now rejecting them. Hard times mean hard decisions as they must come to terms with an unknown future that bears so little resemblance to the bedrock of their past.

This is a brave story of forced migration, of new and unfamiliar horizons. The land in Australia is now teaching hard lessons to its pastoralist settlers. The stoic Aussie pragmatism and courage will strike a familiar chord as these very personal encounters between man and his environment are played out just over the fence.

This is a story that will resound deep in New Zealand’s farming heartland and appeal to the wider community.

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