Factual folk tale of three little half-caste girls who in the early 1930s, by authority of the Aborigines Act, were taken from their home and transported 1200 miles away to an "assimilation" camp, whence they promptly escaped and set out homeward on foot, using the titular structure — "the longest fence in the world" — as their road map. The assimilation policy, scandalously on the books into the 1970s, is no doubt deplorable, and as a dramatic subject, in consequence, it inspires easy indignation and self-satisfaction, as well as such dog-eared images as the mother running tearfully alongside, and then collapsing in the dust, of the vehicle spiriting away her children. And Kenneth Branagh, as the prissy pen-pusher in charge of enforcing the policy, all too plainly relishes his blandly villainous lines: "In spite of himself, the native must be helped." (Director Phillip Noyce's subsequently shot but almost simultaneously released The Quiet American, from the Graham Greene novel, ventures into grayer morality.) The trek itself makes an acceptable if unexciting adventure story, with the girls going through a variety of terrains and helpers. And the appended documentary footage of two of the real girls as old women administers a guaranteed heart-tug. With Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan, and Davil Gulpilil. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd