Set against the backdrop of the Kimberley region’s humbling expanse, director Sean O’Reilly’s Guided by Horses is grounding and deeply moving. The documentary feature debut honours the powerful and ongoing cultural regeneration work by Professor Juli Coffin’s Yawardani Jan-ga project, an Equine Assisted Learning program for Indigenous young people. The Kimberley region is home to wild brumbies, horse nomads who wander released in this remote landscape after the dissolution of various missionary projects. The film acknowledges how nature and humanity might heal alongside one another. Crucially, it upholds the invaluable cultural wisdom of First Nations Australians and the necessary role of art in highlighting this for ongoing reconciliation.

 Horses have always been at humanity’s side–carrying us from place to place, building our cities, our fellow soldiers in war, farming with us, and being loved by us. But they have also been enslaved as world-building colonial tools, forced to be in service of extreme human greed, the destruction of land, the destruction of people. Professor Juli Coffin asserts that their true purpose is unconditional love. 

A Nyangumarta woman, Coffin is an Aboriginal researcher and “horse buff” who works alongside First Nations young people, especially those facing mental illness, helping them to connect with four-legged friends in a meaningful and emotionally enriching way. O’Reilly’s Guided By Horses, which had its world premiere at MIFF on 20 August, captures Coffin’s story and magnifies her beautiful life purpose and project. Sparked by an immense personal tragedy after her brother-boy passed away from depression and suicide, Coffin expressed the profound grief rising from the alarming Indigenous youth suicide rate in remote regions such as the Kimberley. Her own experience of loss has underlined her need to foster alternative and nature-based healing practices and learning experiences for young people to promote positive mental health in their adult lives. Coffin suggests that horses are unjudgmental and “don’t see colour,” instead they love us unconditionally because they “sense our energy” and connect with what lies within us. They “mirror our behaviour,” she writes on her website, “which can teach us a lot about ourselves and our experiences”. Coffin offers that the horses in her program, many of which are rescue animals, might stand in the place of loss and be like nurturing elders for these young people. 

Guided By Horses pieces together a series of interviews with Coffin about her work, amplifying many of the young people enrolled in her program who discuss what it means to them. With a focus on youth social and emotional wellbeing, the program helps to “build healthy coping skills among Aboriginal youth”. Coffin’s research finds that human-animal relationships facilitate an important neurodevelopmental process. In her program, she pairs up each young person with their own horse, as well as an assisting worker who guides them through learning strategies to cope with the difficulties of adolescence in a space that is sensitive and grounding. On the Yawardanijanga website, Coffin writes; “Just being around our horses has the power to help young people develop a better understanding of themselves and others”. The program's name translates to “horses helping” in English. A mother of two young boys diagnosed with ASD/ADHD, voiced how the program has aided in the regulation of their moods and allowed them to become comfortable with themselves. Another featured young person expressed how the program helped her “feel at home” living away from her native Country. In her interviews, she expressed how it supported her with working through a sense of out-of-place-ness as both a teenager and an Indigenous person who is dislocated from both her Country and her ancestors. 

Like Coffin’s program, Guided By Horses is also deeply soothing. Featuring utterly magnificent scenic shots of the Kimberely landscape, the documentary displays the diversity of its rolling sand beaches, cracked desert expanses, knee-buckling sunsets and the sublime starry night sky. Brumbies meander their way in and out of the panning shots captured by cinematographer, Sophy Crane, cementing the horses as the highlight of this hopeful and inspirational film and as strong characters of their own. Throughout the documentary, Juli Coffin echoes that the humans are mere facilitators; the horses do all the work in grounding young folk and providing them with presence, dependability and most importantly, unconditional love.

Although Juli Coffin’s project was born from a devastating social issue and the ricocheting atrocities committed against Australia’s First Peoples, it seeds profound and inspired hope. O’Rielly said during the post-screening Q&A that Coffin’s project “offers a very incredible solution,” adding that he and his collaborators “always want to celebrate that work”. 

Guided By Horses will be embarking upon a festival tour around Australia and is set for a national theatrical release. 

Visit guidedbyhorsesmovie.com to support Professor Juli Coffin’s inspiring program.