Damage
Written and directed by Madeleine Blackwell
Starring Ali Al Jenabi, Imelda Bourke
Luna Cinemas, Leederville (from March 16th)

Damage is very much an Australian story the synopsis of which is deceptively simple: on a bleak night, a taxi driven by Ali, a refugee whose visa forbids him to work but is driving shifts with another man’s license picks up an elderly woman with a faulty memory.

The film’s tagline is: “She Can’t Remember, He Can’t Forget”. The characters are symbolic of our recent national history. Ali personifies all the refugees who have been mistreated by Australia and the aged passenger personifies the Great Australian Forgetting.

As they travel through the increasingly alienating environment their personal needs are uncovered. Through their stilted conversation and compelling portraiture of their faces their traumas slowly reveal.

What unfolds, as writer/director Madeleine Blackwell told Red Ant, is “a small film with big ideas.”

The filmic technique is quietly audacious. For example, the camera spends considerable time focused on the individuals’ faces making eye contact with the viewer. Blackwell’s intention is to force the audience to relate to the real people involved.

And they are very real, neither of the two actors is a professional. Ali Al Jenabi is an Iraqi refugee who has spent over fifteen years living in Australia on a removal-pending bridging visa. Imelda Bourke had a successful career as a singer, but this is her first movie role at the age of 89 – she also happens to be the director’s mother.

Through workshopping, the actors brought their own lived experience to the film.

Apart from the two leads, all other voices in the film are disembodied. They are either mobile phone callers or snippets of radio news or radio songs. Another “character” is the surveillance state apparatus that tracks every move.

There is a sequence in the film involving water that occurs in silence but which every Australian viewer will immediately understand. It is a shocking commentary on Australia’s history of mistreatment of refugees.

Damage is a labour of love for Blackwell and a test of perseverance. She told Red Ant that she took the idea to 20 producers without success before gathering a crew and setting out on doing the production herself.

When Blackwell spoke with Red Ant, she had just returned from very successful screenings at the Bangalore International Film Festival in India. That came right after a screening at Parramatta Riverside Theatre with Arabic subtitles where her audience were refugees or immigrants from middle eastern wars. She said the Q&A was proof that many people have an immediate connection with the film.

The ending of Damage is not a typical cinematic denouement. Blackwell told Red Ant that “neatly packaged endings are easily digested but I sought a more thoughtful reaction to the many layers of narrative in the film”.

Damage achieves that and with the use of the Wikileaks footage Collateral Murder and a special reference to Julian Assange in the credits there is plenty to think about.

The trailer for Damage can be seen here.