The Giants

Judges' comments

The Giants is a crystal-clear vision of the pressures and courage of activist and politician Bob Brown. A wonderfully layered doco-biography, Laurence Billiet and Rachael Antony draw on Brown’s lifetime of inspiring activism, from the ground-breaking Franklin campaign for Tasmania’s last wild river, to today’s battle for the Tarkine rainforest.

There are a range of issues threaded through this story — the environment, police repression, laws, politics and homosexuality. The writers use a steady hand to draw these all together as one ecosystem embedding the magnificent metaphors of mycelium, the water cycle and the forest itself. The pacing ebbs and flows to interweave strong visuals with inspiring dialogue creating a powerful picture of one man’s community and their impact both in Australia and globally. Billiet and Antony end with Brown’s clarion call to action, ‘What did you do once you knew?’

This is gorgeously structured and distinctively styled visual storytelling.