Wayne Blair | Australia 2012 | 103 min
The Sapphires is set in 1969 and tells the story of the McCrae sisters, four Aboriginal singers from country Victoria whose biggest dream is to become as famous as their Motown idols.
The film is an adaptation of the stage musical, when four talented singers from a remote Aboriginal mission are discovered by an unlikely talent scout. Plucked from obscurity and branded as Australia’s answer to The Supremes, The Sapphires grasp the chance of a lifetime when they’re offered their first real gig – entertaining the troops in Vietnam.
The Sapphires is a feel-good film “full of rousing soul standards” [1], but also more than just a story about 4 young women discovering love and tragedy in a war zone.
Within a comic framework, it talks about the obstacles they have to overcome as Aboriginal people in a country that had only just given them the right to vote.
