LUCKY MILES World Cinema

In an unlikely setting-Australia ‘s outback in 1990-first-time director Michael James Rowland gives us a wickedly funny comedy peopled with refugees, human cargo smugglers and army reservists patrolling the shores for smuggling boats.

When the asylum seekers swim for shore at the start of the film they are searching for a bus that will take them inland, specifically to Perth, where a Cambodian refugee believes he will find his Australian father. Instead, they are lost in the Australian outback and there isn’t a bus stop for hundreds of miles. At one point, aside from wondering if they are even in Australia, an Iraqi refugee asks aloud , “If this is such a great country, why haven’t we heard of their soccer team?”

The comedy gets broader and more physical as the dry landscape takes its toll and dust and delirium set in. At its core, the film is a tender exploration of humankind’s unfortunate tendency towards cross-cultural misunderstanding.