As a group of Indigenous adults argue about whether to save their government housing or their sacred lands, their children struggle with how the ancestral Dreaming makes sense in their contemporary lives filled with hip-hop and dinosaur bones.

When the Dogs Talked mixes nonfiction and fiction in a thoughtful yet humorous drama about the difficulties Indigenous communities have living within the strictures of modern white culture while maintaining a sense of their own traditions and relationship to the land.

Director Elizabeth Povinelli and members of the Karrabing Film Collective are festival guests.