A meditation on the corruption of civilization and the terrifying purity of wildness, Nicolas Roeg’s second film concerns two English children, a teenage girl and her six-year-old brother, abandoned in the Australian outback after their father commits suicide. In the course of their wanderings through the desert, the brother and sister encounter an aboriginal teenager who is on his "walkabout"—an initiation ritual involving months of solo survival. With no common language, the threesome begins a trek that slowly breaks down their cultural barriers. Employing a minimum of dialogue, Roeg exhibits his remarkable skills as both director and cameraman to create an aesthetically dazzling, near-mystical modern fable.