Oranges and Sunshine is based on the true story of Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham UK, and is a film that is long overdue. Margaret (Emily Watson) initially dismissing a young Australian woman's search for her estranged British family after being deported at 4 years old, chances upon a similar account from one of her weekly group counseling sessions. Intrigued and disturbed by these stories she begins an exhaustive quest to uncover the dual British and Australian governments of the day organised deportation of children from the UK to Australia from the 1940s til 1970s.
An estimated 130,000 children of varying ages were told they be going to a land of endless sunshine, where you could pick oranges for breakfast on the way to school... their parents, however, were told the children would be placed in "nice" homes. What resulted was three generations of displaced people with only sketchy identities that were subjected to inhumane conditions at the hands of new authorities.
Directed by Jim Loach (King's Speech), the story mainly follows the case studies of two male Australians played by Hugo Weaving and David Wenham as Margaret tirelessly searches to reunite families, and ultimately brings worldwide attention to this extraordinary miscarriage of justice.
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, after intense lobbying, finally acknowledged the British Stolen Generation along with the Stolen Indigenous Generation in his first term of office in 2007. Both policies occurred simultaneously in the same decades. It's ironic to note the government's aim was to populate Australia, while presently the government is trying to keep immigrants out.
While such an important film in historical context, it only skims the surface of these people's trauma and the ludicrous secret polices of those in power.
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