AllMovie

Palm Island is a community off the Australian coast that's dominated by Aborigines and other indigenous peoples, but the police force are mostly white, a reminder of the nation's troubled racial history. In 2004, police officer Chris Hurley arrested Aboriginal Palm Island resident Cameron Doomadgee after the latter cursed at him while intoxicated. Forty-five minutes after Doomadgee was arrested, he was found dead in his cell at the local jail, and while authorities insisted his injuries were the result of a fall, the eyewitness testimony of another inmate told a different story. Doomadgee's death became a scandal in Australia that refused to go away, and filmmaker Tony Krawitz examines the case and its ramifications in the documentary The Tall Man. The film profiles both Hurley and Doomadgee, revealing aspects of each man that were often ignored in the media coverage of the controversy, and explores how the law failed so many in this high-profile case, not just Doomadgee. The Tall Man received its North American premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival.