Lucky Miles

Section: World Cinema
Directed by: Michael James Rowland


Australia, 2007

Dir.: Michael James Rowland
Scr.: Michael James Rowland, Helen Barnes
Phot.: Geoff Burton
Ed.: Henry Dangar
Cast: Kenneth Moraleda, Rodney Afif, Srisacd Sacdpraseuth
Format: 35 mm
Color
105 mins
www.dendyfilms.com.au /luckymiles.html

It’s the year 1990 and somewhere on the Australian coast an Indonesian fishing boat comes ashore bearing passengers from Cambodia and Iraq who are trying to enter the country illegally. Disenchanted by false promises, the refugees find themselves on the edge of the desert with three hundred kilometres to the nearest town. The group breaks up and chance brings together the morose Iraqi engineer Youssif, the placid but determined Cambodian Arun, who is looking for his Australian father, and the Javanese fisherman Ramelan, whose curse is to attract catastrophes of all kinds.

Like Danis Tanović in No Man’s Land, in his debut, writer-director Rowland treats a political theme with laconic humour born of the absurdity of the situation, without losing sight of its humanistic dimension. The journey of this peculiar threesome in search of the happiness that is civilisation, is traced by an imaginative camera lens, which makes ideal use of the photogenic qualities of the vast Australian plains.

See also:
	Among the Clouds		Big Man Japan
	Che: Part One		Made Up Memories
	Medicine for Melancholy		Pachamama
	The Shaft		Soi Cowboy