The Rocket by Kim Mordaun

JUDGES' COMMENTS 

Documentary filmmaker and screenwriter Kim Mordaunt has returned to Laos for his first feature film, The Rocket, and written a deeply heart-felt and sensitive screenplay about a young Laotian boy’s rite of passage. Cursed at birth for being the surviving twin, the boy must lead his family, uprooted by the construction of a new dam, across a war-torn landscape, littered with unexploded ordinance, to find a new home.

Set amongst the superstitions of the Lao people and a natural world that hums with spirits, both good and bad, Mordaunt successful balances local folklore with western storytelling principles in the creation of an endearing, fable-like tale of redemption and acceptance. Rich in detail and compassion for the boy and his dispossessed, rural community, Mordaunt takes the reader, and ultimately the viewer, into a world rarely seen by outsiders and does so with great integrity and respect for local traditions and beliefs. Uniquely, the film itself was ultimately shot entirely in the Lao language, signaling a bold and daring new direction for Australian cinema. It is this authenticity coupled with the intimate portrayal of the story’s protagonists that makes The Rocket such an enriching experience.