Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #73: Balibo (2009)

In 1975, the Pacific island nation of East Timor was granted independence from Portugal after three centuries of rule. But just nine days later, Indonesia launched an invasion. Five Australian journalists, from two networks, were sent to cover the conflict from the town of Balibo, but never came home.

Balibo tells the true of story of what happened next, through the testimony of a fictional Timorese woman named Juliana (Bea Viegas). Veteran foreign correspondent Roger East (Anthony LaPaglia) is sent to Balibo to uncover what happened to the missing journalists: Greg Shackleton (Damon Gameau), Gary Cunningham (Gyton Grantley), Tony Stewart (Mark Winter), Malcolm Rennie (Nathan Phillips) and Brian Peters (Thomas Wright). After first making contact with ABC reporter Tony Maniaty (Simon Stone), who ran into Shackleton shortly before their deaths, East meets young revolutionary Jose Ramos-Horta (Oscar Isaac), who agrees to join him in his investigation and to guide him through the war-torn countryside. Despite some very pronounced and personal disagreements, a mutual trust and respect develops between the two before they are thrust right into the eye of the storm.

Co-writer and director Robert Connolly is known for hardline political dramas, and Balibo is maybe his bravest and best work. Working from journalist Jill Jolliffe's book Cover-Up, he and co-writer David Williamson (Australia's most celebrated playwright) recreate this factual saga as like a flashback-within-a-flashback, an unusual and tricky technique in itself but which makes the movie more layered than most of its ilk. Within this framework Connolly is admirably faithful and honest to the history, sparing none of its grim details and distilling the intimacy of all the character dynamics very sensitively. He also stages the war scenes like a journalist would but with adequate energy and objectivity for a director, but his real triumph is how he works with his cast. Anthony LaPaglia gives the performance of his life as East (who, in a cruelly ironic twist of fate, was murdered himself during his investigation), and Isaac, in his breakthrough role, absolutely nails the young Ramos-Horta's firebrand charisma and makes him the perfect conscience to the more pariochially-interested Australian East. Both deservedly won AACTA Awards in 2009 for their turns. Also, Viegas is beautifully restrained as the confronted entry into these horrific events and the actors playing the Balibo Five are very strong, particularly Gameau and Phillips.

We may never know, as Connolly concedes, who killed East and the Balibo Five, especially after over 40 years. But particularly thanks to this very brave and powerful film, their work and searches continue, as the struggles for truth, justice and peace endure around the world.