No matter how privileged we are, everyone knows the paranoia of feeling cursed and has tasted the fear of being cast out of our home environment. With The Rocket, Australian director Kim Mordaunt takes this universal theme and applies it to a young boy in Northern Laos for whom these feelings are not self-indulgent fantasy but daily reality. In accordance with local superstition, the hero Ahlo (Sittiphon Disamoe) should have been killed alongside his stillborn twin, but luckily grows up to be the most irrepressible boy. In a beguiling central performance, child actor Disamoe goes beyond the rough diamond quality of many non-professional actors, to convincingly express a range of emotions. Life provides tough lessons, but Ahlo also learns that with unexploded bombs and James Brown’s dance moves, there are unexpected joys to be found in Western imperialism. But The Rocket is no compliant fantasy about the value of subservience. Mordaunt’s inspiring film is equally aware of imperialism’s dangers, including those very same unexploded bombs and a burly, sinister white man who clearly profits from the displacement of the jungle’s inhabitants in the name of progress. (Russell Edwards)