The Rocket

Australian writer-director Kim Mordaunt came to his debut fiction feature via-documentary Bomb Harvest, about Laotian children collecting scrap metal from American bombs. The Rocket’s 10-year-old protagonist isn’t one of them. He does encounter some “sleeping tigers”: unexploded bombs and rockets. These become of particular interest to Ahlo (Sitthiphon Disamoe) when he learns about a rocket building contest. Yes, this gut-punching political subject becomes a coming-of-age underdog tale, albeit one with tremendous pathos and heart.

Laos is reportedly one of the world’s most bombed countries and Mordaunt captures the devastation as well as capturing the nuances of the local culture, ritual and superstition. The language is earthy; the talismans phallic; and Ahlo has to continually fight against his grandmother’s conviction that he’s a cursed child. The director bakes this authenticity into his casting choices. Young Disamoe was a street kid and the overwhelming sense of poverty and loss becomes evocative and poignant – without ever tipping preachy.