Latenzia asks her friend Amanda to raise her 7-year-old daughter Naida in Tasmania, far from her traditional home in Central Australia.
The Pledge begins when Amanda enters this radical pact, never believing it will be forever.
But by the time Naida is 9, she’s lost her mum three times: to alcohol, to distance and, finally, to death after Latenzia dies in a car crash 2021, aged 30.
What happens next is the heart of this film.
Bridging vast cultural and geographical distances, Amanda is raising Naida partly because institutional responses to the crisis in remote Indigenous communities have failed.
Amanda is bucking the system to ensure she keeps her ‘Pledge’ to her beloved friend, Latenzia.
“Latenzia asked two things of me before she died,” Amanda says. “To tell her story to the world and to raise her little girl, Naida.”
With the help of an old Toyota troopy that carries them thousands of kilometres between the two homes, the work of bridging the divide and uniting the two families begins.
For Amanda, The Pledge must work. Otherwise, the sacrifice of raising Naida far from her birth family, culture and Country will be too great.
Meanwhile, the family in Tennant Creek must learn to trust this white woman who has taken their lost family member’s child. For everyone, it’s a gamble.
Naida has been living with Amanda for four years. Now 12, she’s adorable – her face lights up the screen. But she’s fiery…and very, very cheeky.
And for the past two years, it’s been double trouble with her cousin Leslie joining her in Hobart after Naida’s grandmother asks Amanda to “keep the little boy safe, too”.
The Pledge is, first and foremost, a love story. It is about motherlove, friendship and sisterhood. It’s about one family responding to extreme circumstances. It is a deeply personal and poignant feature documentary about absolute solidarity in what often feels like a nation divided, told through the prism of Latenzia and Amanda’s inspiring and uplifting ‘Pledge’.
