Kim Mordaunt
Australian filmmaker Kim Mordaunt has used his background in documentary film to stunning effect in his Laos-set feature debut, The Rocket. We talked to the director about what inspired him to craft his tale of a young boy seeking redemption in his journey through a war-ravaged country, and how, as a director, he navigated some of the challenges and obstacles which can occur when shooting in a volatile and exotic landscape.

You touched on some of the themes found in The Rocket in a previous documentary [2007’s Bomb Harvest] but how was the narrative formed?

We couldn’t have done this film in the Lao language with protagonists from the country unless we’d made the documentary beforehand. The producer Silvia [Wilczynski] and myself lived in Hanoi, Vietnam about ten years ago and we worked there as teachers, on a propaganda newspapers, and I even landed a job as gameshow host on a rigged programme. All sorts of funny things happening and we travelled a lot to Laos and fell in love with the place. It was like going back in time. The people were very gentle and kind. Then we found out it the most bombed-out place in the world, per capital. We asked ourselves how are these people so forgiving after what happened to them. We were so inspired by that and it led to the making of the documentary. It was about an Australian bomb disposal expert so we had to give it an Australian/Anglo perspective.

It took a few years to make but the result of it meant people in the Laos community back in Australia loved it, as did those who saw it around the world. The only question we got back was, “what about a Laos protagonist?” We took that request seriously and took a bloody great breath and started developing The Rocket.

Is the rocket festival within the film a real competition?

Some believed me made it up for the film, but it’s a real thing. It’s a little like Christmas in a way. It happens all around the country in Laos, at the end of the dry season, which is hell for the people. The rocket fest is really about trying to break that season and bring water, so they can eat properly. It also features in the end of Bomb Harvest. We loved that is was so irreverent. That’s the beauty of it – you’re not sitting down on your knees, praying to the gods. You’re trying to piss them off by firing at them (laughs.) It’s an ancient Buddhist festival that’s evolved and works as a metaphor for the war.

As that’s the climax of the story, did you have to work backwards with the narrative?

In a funny sort of way, we did. We thought, thematically, the festival was very interesting. You have the legacy of war and a country that get absolutely hammered, and also this accelerated industrial change with foreign corporations coming into Laos due to its rich natural resources. When a country’s poor you can strike deals with them and some of those arrangements aren’t necessarily fair. We thought this was an Australian story and it was important to put a question mark in front of our relationship with Laos.

We decided that if the end of the film is about calling for rain, why don’t we make the journey of the film about a family who has their water taken away from them, via a hydro dam. The dam controls the rivers, which is an area of life source for the people. Other things we witnesses, which we believed could make up part of the narrative on a personal level, was seeing people being relocated and losing everything, also seeing some dying of lowland diseases. Loss had to be a part of this story and losing a sense of self.

One thing you feel when visiting Laos is that it’s a very mystical country, full of folklore. People really do feel good and bad spirits exist around them. As the lives of those being relocated were changing, the elderly, more traditionalist members of the family were clinging to their beliefs, thinking something bad was at work. It was about putting all that together and making something personal, which had the weight of the country and its history – the legacy of war and the relocation of traditional people for industry.

It’s an ambitious film in scope. How much of your background in documentary-making helped you achieve what you did?

You’ve touched on something interesting there. Some people are a little snobby about documentary and the transition to drama, but the bottom line is both are about storytelling and searching for narrative, characters and complexity. The wonderful thing that documentary gives you is how to work in the moment, and you learn to deal with chaos. You never know what’s going to happen so you have to do your best to not freak out and worry about change. For a film like this everything was fraught, fragile and falling away the whole time. We were filming a low budget film in a communist country with kids, animals and explosives. Documentary helped us deal with those changes and disorder, and turn the compromises we were faced with into something really good.

It’s frustrating that the film wasn’t recognised in the foreign language category at this year’s Oscars.

There’s some much money, time and politics involved throughout the awards stage and we didn’t really have any of that on our side, unfortunately. Our screening for the Academy was at 10pm, and I received a note from the some industry people afterwards to say that we’d landed the dud time. It was seen by some at the AFI fest and they loved it and really wanted it to be nominated. It’s a shame the official screening was late at night, which was a disaster, time-wise. The bottom line is you need a bucket of money to get it in front of people. We took home three prizes at Berlin and Tribecca, however and overall it’s been an extraordinary year, full of surprises. It’s all good.

What’s next for you? Something closer to home, perhaps?

My main objective is to make another film with Sylvia, my producer on The Rocket. We recently returned from a research trip in Africa, which is one of the settings [alongside Australia] for our intended follow up feature.

I’m writing another draft at the moment. This one is a love story, and there’s some themes which have spilled over from The Rocket, mainly the issues around the legacy of war. It’s something we haven’t got out of our system yet and it will probably be that way for a long time.

The Rocket is released on March 14, and you can read our review here.