Unfinished Sky (2007)

An Outback farmer takes in an Afghani woman who has fled from a brothel.

Director:

Peter Duncan

Writers:

Peter Duncan, Kees van der Hulst (screenplay)

Stars:

William McInnes, Monic Hendrickx, Milo

15 wins & 13 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview:
William McInnes	...	John Woldring
Monic Hendrickx	...	Tahmeena
Milo	...	Elvis
Bille Brown	...	Bob Potter
Christopher Sommers	...	Mike Potter
David Field	...	Sgt Carl Allen
Sam Cotton	...	Angus
Christina Anderson	...	Supermarket Shopper
Renai Caruso	...	Kate
Zulaikha Deen	...	Shahla (6yo)
Scott McRae	...	Policeman #1
Roy Billing	...	Royce
Mercia Deane-Johns	...	Barbara
Philippa Coulthard	...	Rose (as Philippa Couthard)
Hannah Cocker	...	Shahla (11yo)

Storyline

Honest Australian Outback sheep-farmer John Woldring leads an isolated life. Suddenly an exotic women turns up at night, armed and frightened out of her wits. He takes her in, grumpily resists her romantic overtures but allows her to become his housekeeper. Gradually he finds out she's an Afghan refugee, looking for other illegally emigrated relatives. He tries to help her quest, but they soon experience the human traffickers are on her track, and better connected then John could guess.

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Plot Keywords:

farmer | australia | bare chested male | beating | chore | 

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Taglines:

to love, sometimes we must risk everything.

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Genres:

Drama | Romance

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Details

Official Sites:

New Holland Pictures Official site [Australia]

Country:

Australia

Language:

English Dari

Release Date:

19 June 2008 (Australia)

Also Known As:

Céu Inacabado

Filming Locations:

Beaudesert, Queensland, Australia

Company Credits

Production Co:

New Holland Pictures, IDTV Film

Technical Specs

Runtime:

94 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Connections

Referenced in De wereld draait door: Episode #4.67 (2008)

User Reviews

Flawed socio-romantic drama

This film demonstrates how fragile film aesthetics are. Quite possibly as a novel, which takes time to read and allows us to accommodate shifts in our emotions, it could be fine. But here we have, essentially two conflicting stories that are jammed onto one another with destructive results.

One story is a tough, indeed brutal, issues movie dealing with justice, male dominance and humanist sentiments, the other is a touching romance about two vulnerable people trying to heal each other from their emotional scars. Neither of these is very original and the one, in my view, emotionally precludes the other. When we are steamed up about injustice, we cannot access the very fine-tuned emotions associated with love.

One of the greatest things about the film medium is its ability to twist time and integrate the past into the present. But here, that is the film's undoing. If the story had been told chronologically, we would at least have been able to get the nastiness out of the way and empathise with the romance, but the threat and extremely crude depictions of the 'horrors of the brothel' keep bursting back in, destroying any subtle emotions that have been generated.