White Australia’s lamentable assimilation policies and the Stolen Generation lie at the heart of Jon Bell’s supernatural suspense drama The Moogai, the winner of the Audience Award for Best Feature at this year’s Sydney Film Festival.

The story opens in 1974 with a scene at once disturbing and familiar. We’re out bush somewhere, with Aboriginal kids playing under the watchful eye of their mother. A car approaches. In it are two white men in suits. Mum whistles a warning and her children scatter among the trees and high grass to evade capture. Things take a strange turn when two of the sisters discover a cave, the home to the Moogai, a malevolent child-snatching spirit. Only one girl comes back.

A still from Jon Bell’s film The Moogai

Bell jumps forward in time to the urban Australia of today and into the life of Sarah (Shari Sebbens), a successful corporate lawyer. About to have her second child with partner Fergus (Meyne Wyatt), she’s already stressed by tensions between her biological mother Ruth (Tessa Rose), the survivor of that Moogai encounter, and her white adoptive mother Annette (Tara Morice).

The baby...