In this digital age, it’s easy to let surfeit data slip by. Information saturates our daily lives. We have multiple personal identification numbers, various passwords and digital keys to remember; significant details and important dates to recall. Statistics assail our every waking moment. We become desensitised to it all, decide to carry what we can and let the rest wash right over.

Generally, unless something personally affects us, we prefer not to pay much notice. We shrug off discomfort, choosing to abdicate degrees of responsibility to ease the turmoil of our lives. As the maxim goes, it has become the standard we’ve accepted. Occasionally, though, something jolts us conscious.

Larissa Behrendt’s feature documentary, After the Apology, is one of these critical experiences.

Indigenous children's removal on the rise 21 years after Bringing Them Home Read more

On 13 February 2008, Australia’s prime minister Kevin Rudd issued a national apology to the stolen generations of Indigenous Australians who suffered forced removals from their families, as part of racist commonwealth, state and territory laws and policies in the middle of last century. It was a gesture recommended in the final report of a national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal children from their families.

Crowds of people gathered together that day in front of screens all around the country and listened intently as the PM, after a flourish of eloquent oratory, eventually laid claim “to a future that embraces all Australians. A future where … the injustices of the past must never, never happen again”.

To my recollection, there was a great sense of collective relief among the public. Since then, the numbers of removals and separation of First Nations kids from their families has actually increased.

The situation has been well reported by news media, and there has been consistent discussion and consequent public mobilisation across social media in the last half dozen years. The data shared by the documentary is known widely at least among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander networks: Indigenous children are 10 times more likely to be in out-of-home care than non-Indigenous kids; there has been a 64.3% increase in Indigenous kids being removed from their family homes between 2008 and 2017.

But the impact of those figures in real-world terms is too often lost on the bulk of the Australian public. This is where the Eualeyai and Kamillaroi woman Larissa Behrendt, who wrote and directed the film, uncompromisingly succeeds. After the Apology delivers the kind of emotional punch that will jar viewers from the outset.

Running over the opening credit sequence is an audio sample of an Aboriginal mother in the midst of having her baby forcibly removed from her care by government family and community services. It is confronting – particularly for an Aboriginal audience.

Over the ensuing hour and 20 minutes, Behrendt repeatedly confronts viewers with similar moments: where women and children need to be de-identified, animated sequences portray four heartbreaking personal stories of separation.

For political and cultural context, confidential evidence given to the 1990s national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal children from their families is conveyed through dramatised monologues; and there are intimate interviews with the strong women behind the struggle to pressure for systemic change, and bring about an end to the cultural ignorance within the child protection system that commonly leads to unnecessary child removals.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hazel Collins with Grandmothers against Removals. Photograph: Paddy Gibson

Central to the story is the community group Grandmothers Against Removal, which was founded by Hazel Collins after several of her grandkids were taken from her Gunnedah home. Along with other members of the group, such as including Suellyn Tighe and the sisters Deb and Jenny Swan, Collins provides viewers with a closer understanding of the trauma inflicted on Aboriginal communities, family networks and individuals by a misinformed, punitive child protection system.

The film, which premiered at Adelaide film festival last year, follows the tireless advocacy of Grandmothers Against Removals to reveal the racism in the state child protection systems across Australia. There are incidents where children protesting against the removal of their younger siblings are threatened with pepper spray by police; repeated accounts of protection warrants issued on fabricated allegations against caring family members; numerous warnings from Aboriginal experts of how removing Indigenous kids from their community creates a trajectory into the criminal justice system; and a reminder of the work being done by the Aboriginal community, who are at the forefront of uncovering these injustices and providing government departments with effective, deliberate strategies to correct the abuses perpetrated within the system.

It could be enough to shock people into joining these strong grandmothers to fight for change.

• After the Apology airs at 8.30pm on Sunday 14 October on NITV