Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Celia A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Rodrigo Amaro At first, "Where The Green Ants Dream" sounds like something really interesting and very intriguing. While in there, the ultimate worthy value is of its entertainment purpose, since the artistic merits of it are quite simplistic. It is what it can be and no more than that. It's a good film, and can only be that. Great doesn't fit such unnecessary project empty of ideas.The movie deals with a strange impasse between a mineral company which wants to explore an aborigine land, and the proclaimers of such land, the native who claim the company will destroy their land and will disturb the sleep and dreams of some green ants who inhabit there, and those ants contain to power to destroy the whole world, if they were to be destroyed. Trying to settle down the issue is a company man (Bruce Spence) who each day goes by seems more inclined in protecting the aborigine and their traditions. Money and other offers are made to them but they refuse all of them...until the day they see an airplane and they want it. A trade seems to be made. Only seems cause the natives don't sign any paper and still refuse the exploration of the land.That kind of subject was covered in plenty of films, and better ones. Like "Lemon Tree" where a simple tree stands on the way between the Israel/Palestine conflicts. And real life has thousands of stories like this happening, about land expropriation in exchange of profit. The more "Where the Green Ants Dream" unfolds the more it becomes unnatural, forced and devoided of any kind of necessity to exist. Why must we see this? Well, what drags most viewers to this is the name of Werner Herzog behind the credits, an important director, indeed, but very little of his greatness is present in this project. The story goes up and down, our interest goes on and off from time to time mainly because of its characters, who should be sympathetic as they are in other movies, instead they're quite annoying, simple-minded, I couldn't care about anyone in here. I couldn't be on the company side and neither on the natives side. The latter was more of a case that I felt they weren't being real, they were inventing that ants story. It baffles me why the story haven't turned into more obscure and dangerous results. No, instead we have the plane being hijacked by a native who keeps singing "My baby does the hanky panky". Herzog wasn't tasteless with this film, he just didn't make this a more vital and relevant piece to the audience. 6/10

tataglia I also remember this film as life-changing. I saw it at the TIFF many years ago and was baffled by it. There is a small scene in an elevator that I remember as a transcendent cinematic moment. Like so many of Herzog's films, it is deeply moving for reasons that aren't easy to put your finger on - often with Herzog it's an odd juxtaposition, an awkward silence, a strange edit, an inappropriate flash of humour or horror that produce a flash of insight. This film, at the time, seemed conventional by Herzog's standards, but I still left the theatre feeling slightly drugged, always a good sign.

wlebing This film has been ignored by the mainstream media. It portrays the futile struggle of an Aboriginal tribe against the needs of civilization. From the first confrontation you know how it will end, but you keep hoping that perhaps the mindless and soul-less rush of progress won't wipe out one more culture.Herzog captures the story in a series of vignettes, each one expressing a fleeting thought or detail.At one point Bruce Spence is trying to explain his theory of space and time to one of the elders, who rebukes him. His reply to the elder is "I'm trying to understand, really I am." The movie is a predecessor to "Rabbit Proof Fence". It makes you realize that as a society we just don't get it.I highly recommend it.

artzau I'm invariably surprised when I mention this film to friends that they say they've never seen it. Werner Herzog in Australia? C'mon. How could the great German director of Wozzeck, Nosferatu and other Gothic classics concern himself with a very oblique tale of a development project impeded by Aboriginal Australians who contend that disturbing the green ants dreams by ripping up their habitat will likewise rip the fabric of the universe? The government solution is to give them an airplane which one of the younger members of their tribe eventually manages to take off with a number of the elders on board. Looking over the cast, you likely not recognize names that most of us who don't follow Aussie films know; some of us may know Bruce Spence from the Mad Max films who plays a geologist, but there are many Australian Aborigines. A poignant moment is seen in the court room scene where one Aborigine rises to speak and the judge asks for a translation, only to be told the men is called "the Mute" because there's no one left who understands his tribal language.The overall effect of the film is wonderfully Herzog with a surrealistic portrayal of the clash of old and new, progress versus conservation and fraught with cultural miscommunication. I really recommend this film for your viewing.