The Rocket (2013 film)
| The Rocket | |
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Film poster
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| Directed by | Kim Mordaunt |
| Produced by | Sylvia Wilczynski |
| Written by | Kim Mordaunt |
| Starring | Sitthiphon Disamoe Loungnam Kaosainam Suthep Po-ngam |
| Music by | Caitlin Yeo |
| Cinematography | Andrew Commis |
| Edited by | Nick Meyers |
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Release date
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Running time
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96 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | Lao |
The Rocket is a 2013 Australian drama film written and directed by Kim Mordaunt. It is set entirely in Northern Laos, and spoken in the Lao language. As an Australian production, it was the country’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards but was not nominated.The Rocket won the Audience Award and the award for Best Actor in a Narrative Feature Film at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was screened at the AFI Fest.
In the Laos mountains, a woman named Mali (Alice Keohavong) gives birth to twins, of which one survives. Her husband's mother, Taitok (Bunsri Yindi) says that the one living child must also die, because one twin is blessed while the other is cursed. Believing her only living twin son to be blessed, Mali refuses to kill it, and so she and Taitok keep it a secret from her husband, Toma (Sumrit Warin).
Seven years later, the living twin named Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe) learns that a second dam is being built, so Toma takes Ahlo to see the dam, where it's revealed in a presentation video that the people of Ahlo's village will have to be relocated due to the valley they live in will be flooded between the two dams. So Ahlo and his family move through the woods while taking his boat with them. With the help of a ploughing buffalo, they manage to get the boat half way up the hill, only for the ropes to snap, sending the boat crashing into Mali, killing her. Furious, Taitok reveals to Toma that Ahlo is a twin and that "he should have died".
After burying Mali, Ahlo and his family ride a bus to their new village, which Taitok doesn't much like due to the running water and electricity that replaces their "traditions". There, Ahlo meets a girl named Kia (Loungnam Kaosainam), who had lost her family and now lives with her uncle, Purple (Suthep Po-ngam), who is a fan of James Brown. Kia shows Ahlo soft land for him to grow mangoes on, which he wishes to do in honour of his mother, but Toma tells Ahlo to no longer speak to them, making Ahlo destroy Toma's model house out of anger. He then visits Kia and Purple again and learns that all the electricity that was promised to the people are being used by the "hydro bosses". The following night, Ahlo sneaks out and attempts to get electricity for the people by hooking up some cables to the main power source, but being the cursed twin, he ends up causing a blackout for everyone else except for Kia and Purple, who have electricity for their television set. The next day, Ahlo tells Kia about his tribe's tradition about being a cursed twin. When he accidentally desecrates a sacred shrine, Ahlo, Toma and Taitko have their house and belongings burnt in retaliation. Along with Kia and Purple, they all sneak out of the village in a cart filled with undetonated bombs from the war or UXO.
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