Sydney Film Festival 2013 - Film Review - The Rocket

A rocket explodes on launch at the Rocket Festival

Australian film director and screen writer, Kim Mordaunt who filmed the acclaimed documentary, Bomb Harvest, released in 2007 has returned to Laos for this feature film of a coming-of-age story. The story plot line revolves around 10-year-old Ahlo who with his family is displaced from their home by the construction of a large dam. While travelling to their relocation village, Ahlo's mother is killed in an accident and the family finds itself almost destitute on arrival as the relocation village is not much more than self-built shacks. The village itself is superstitious and Ahlo and his family are forced to flee along with his new friend Kia and her uncle, Purple. Seeking a new life, Ahlo hears of the Rocket Festival, a dangerous, crazy event where large bamboo rockets are launched into the clouds to bring rain but with the incentive of a large cash prize for the winner whose rocket travels the furthest into the clouds. Ahlo builds his own rocket and challenges for the first prize. Ever present throughout this film is the legacy of the Vietnam war with bomb craters, live cluster bombs and large active munitions still littering the landscape and casting a long shadow over the lives of the Laotian people. Overall this is a feel-good film shot in an evocative landscape with a story of overcoming the odds.