The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) will present French auteur Claire Denis' latest feature White Material (2009), lauded as a masterpiece of beguiling simplicity, for an extended season in January 2011.

Shot in Cameroon, the story takes place in an unnamed country of Africa fractured by colonialism and civil war. Many locals have deserted the land as rebels, many of them children, terrorise those who stay.

The film follows Maria Vial (often quite literally with a handheld camera recording even the subtlest of actions) a coffee plantation matriarch who fails to acknowledge the seriousness of the violence and corruption surrounding her, soon to embroil her and her family in a bloody conflict. As Maria and her family await the inevitable, the tensions in their personal relationships, and in their relations with the African community, become exposed.