Rabbit-Proof Fenceis a 2002 Australian drama film directed by Phillip Noyce based on the bookFollow the Rabbit-Proof Fenceby Doris Pilkington Garimara . It is based on a true story concerning the author's mother, as well as two other mixed-race Aboriginal girls, who ran away from the Moore River Native Settlement , north of Perth , to return to their Aboriginal families, after having been placed there in 1931. The film follows the girls as they walk for nine weeks along 1,500 miles (2,400 km) of the Australian rabbit-proof fence to return to their community at Jigalong , while being pursued by a white authority figure and an Aboriginal tracker .

The soundtrack to the film, calledLong Walk Home: Music from the Rabbit-Proof Fence, is by Peter Gabriel . British producer Jeremy Thomas , who has a long connection with Australia, executive-produced the film, selling it internationally through his sales arm, HanWay Films .

Set in Western Australia during the 1930s, the film begins in the remote town of Jigalong where three children, sisters Molly Craig ( Everlyn Sampi ), 14, and Daisy Kadibil ( Tianna Sansbury ), 8, live with their mother and grandmother, and their cousin Gracie Fields ( Laura Monaghan ), 10. The town lies along the northern part of Australia's rabbit-proof fence, which runs for several thousand miles.

Thousands of miles away, the 'protector' of Western Australian Aborigines, A. O. Neville ( Kenneth Branagh ), signs an order to relocate the three girls to his re-education camp. The children are referred to by Neville as " half-castes ", having one white and one aboriginal parent. Neville's reasoning is portrayed as being that the Aboriginal peoples of Australia are a danger to themselves, and that the the "half-castes" must be bred out of existence. The children are forcibly taken from Jigalong and taken to the camp at Moore River to the south. Half-castes that are of a certain age live at the camps and are taught to become servants for the whites living in Australia.