WHILE many Australians are well aware of brutal regimes around the world, there is a region closer to home that has been violently oppressed for more then 50 years.

The plight of the Indonesian-ruled West Papua moved Yamba photographer Emma Capp to do something about it through a medium people could relate to - film.

Ms Capp got involved in the campaign in 2015 when she attended the West Papua Freedom Forum held in Darwin in 2015. In early 2016 she screened the surf documentary, Isolated, in North Coast cinemas which followed surfers to West Papua. The surfers not only discovered unexplored waves but also got a first-hand insight into the atrocities happening there to this day.

"Ever since the Dutch left and Indonesia brutally occupied West Papua in 1963 its people have been traumatised by the military controlling their daily life,” Ms Capp said.

In 1969 the UN officially handed West Papua over to Indonesia.

According to experts, this and a series of events leading up to it were orchestrated by the US and its hunger for control of natural resources.

"Experts believe that this was the beginning of oppression and slow- motion genocide of the West Papuan people that continues to this day,” Ms Capp said.

"The military presence dominates and often they shoot before asking questions.”

This time around Ms Capp will screen a more in-depth and personal documentary about West Papua in her home town of Yamba on Friday night.

The Road to Home tells the story of Benny Wenda, a West Papuan tribal leader, whose village was bombed by the Indonesian military when he was a child.

On the Free West Papua organisation's website, Mr Wenda says many of his family were killed so he went on to campaign against the brutal occupation and was arrested for leading a peaceful movement for independence, suffering imprisonment, torture and threats to his life before he escaped and sought exile in the UK.

His story is told by English filmmaker Dominic Brown, who followed the West Papuan for two years to create this film.

Proceeds of the film screening will go directly to the United Liberation Movement of West Papua to help send its five executives to the UN General Assembly and Decolonisation Committee meeting to be held in New York in September.

"Because of the media bans within West Papua the majority of people in this country don't know anything about the intense suffering of these people just off our shore,” Ms Capp said.

The Road to Home (50mins) will screen at Yamba Cinema this Friday at 6.30pm. Following the film a special Q&A will be held with ULMWP's Rex Rumakeik, who will travel from Canberra, and Byron Bay's Matthew Jameson, who has been involved in the campaign for many years.