Review of 'Lucky Miles'

Premiering at this year’s Adelaide Film Festival, Lucky Miles recently took out the People’s Choice Award at the Sydney Film Festival, and its easy to see why: it’s a humane, endearing and gently funny film that’s been carefully crafted by Director Michael Rowland and beautifully shot by Geoff Burton. It deals with a group of illegal immigrants who are dumped on the coast of Western Australia by people smugglers, and the film touches on some topical issues about asylum seekers without ever getting preachy. Ultimately it’s a character piece, and the design of those characters is the key to the film’s warmth, and probably the reason it resonates so strongly with audiences.

Set in 1990, the story opens on a stunning Australian beach. A scruffy bunch of Indonesian people smugglers, led by Muluk (Sawung Jabo), land two groups of illegal immigrants. The first are Cambodians, gently led by Arun (Kenneth Moreleda), a young man who has an Australian father he has never met living in Perth. The second group are Iraquis, escaping the regime of Saddam Hussein. They are much more temperamental, and within moments are arguing about their national soccer team. In their party is Youssif (Rodney Afif), a professional engineer seeking asylum.

They are all told to climb the massive sand dune ahead of them, and wait for a bus that will take them to Perth. As they climb, the boat disappears across the bay, and at the top they find that they are in the middle of absolutely nowhere. The two groups head off in different directions, in search of their dreams and a little drinking water.

To add a little more spice to the story, and to provide the Australian cultural contrast to the new arrivals, is a motley crew of three Army Reservists who are commissioned to track the immigrants. The film shifts from group to group following their trials and tribulations through some stunning desert landscape. It’s here that we get to know the characters and join their extraordinary journey.

It’s Rowland's first feature film from a script he co-wrote with Helen Barnes, and he has managed to extract some superb work from his little known cast, carefully defining the different characters without ever stereotyping national characteristics for the sake of a laugh. Afif’s passionate, proud and easily frustrated Yousiff is the outstanding performance amongst many. This is a heart-warming film where the humour is never far from the surface, and it’s also refreshing to watch an Australian film where the typical Aussie characters take a back seat to some of the other nationalities we share the land with.