"My roots, my spirituality, my connection to country and my ancestors are who I am," he says.

"I have chosen storytelling and this path because this is what I like and how it is.

"Maybe I'll stop making movies and write country and western songs but it will always be about black issues."

Thornton's films - Samson and Delilah, Sweet Country, We Don't Need a Map - tell Aboriginal stories, rooted in place and time, that are unfamiliar to mainstream Australia.

His latest movie, The New Boy, which is screening at the Sydney Film Festival and stars Cate Blanchett, Deborah Mailman, Wayne Blair and newcomer Aswan Reid, is no exception.

Warwick Thornton is a Katej man who grew up in Alice Springs.

He began his career at the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association before studying at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney.

Thornton's debut feature, Samson and Delilah, which tells the love story of two young Aboriginal people from central Australia, won multiple awards including at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Camera d'or for best first feature.

Thornton started working on the script for The New Boy when he was in his early twenties but its genesis goes back to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

"It took its own time I guess, I don't think it would be a very good film if I had made it when I was 22. I think it would've been angst-ridden and slightly angry, whereas now that I am 53 it matured and matured a little bit more," he says.

When Thornton saw Star Wars as a child in 1979 he was instantly captured by the fantasy of the power of the Jedi and made a connection to the Ngangkari in his community.

Ngangkari are men and women with special powers that can be used for good or evil, with the power to heal and the power to kill.

These themes of healing and power are explored in The New Boy.

The film takes place in the 1940s in a remote monastery, run as a mission for Aboriginal children by renegade nun Sister Eileen (Blanchett).

A new charge (Reid) is delivered in the dead of the night - a boy who appears to have special powers much like a Jedi.

When writing, Thornton doesn't use a computer, he's strictly a pen and paper man, mainly due to how ridiculously painful he finds typing.

"I am still looking for the letter A on the keyboard whereas my hands and my mind work perfectly together and I can write fluidly and quickly with a pen in hand," he says.

"If I tried to do that on a computer it would be too painful and I would throw the computer out the window."

Thornton wants to inspire the next generation of Indigenous filmmakers.

"It can happen for you, the world is your oyster, absolutely bring it on," he says.

"I'm a grumpy old man now, what I like to talk about is not necessarily the same conversations that the younger generation of Indigenous people want to talk about.

"Storytelling, whether you are sitting around a campfire or making a movie is a craft and it needs to be honed, the more you do it the more you'll get better at it.

"There are doors that are unlocked and there are a lot of people that'll open doors for you, you just have to be confident, believe in yourself and believe in the story."

The New Boy is screening at the Sydney Film Festival this weekend on June 10 and 11.

Australian Associated Press