F

estival Sinema Australia Indonesia (FSAI) kicks off its 2018 program on Thursday. The bilateral celebration will feature several prominent Australian movies that are likely to be received well and pique the interest of Indonesian audiences, as well as some works by Indonesian filmmakers who are Australian alumni.

“Film is a wonderful medium for our two countries to continue learning from each other. We are proud to show not only the works of talented Australian filmmakers, but also the efforts of Indonesians who are Australian alumni in a bid to appreciate their work,” said Australian chargé d’affaires Allaster Cox.

The festival will run until Jan. 28, taking place across four cities: Jakarta, Surabaya in East Java, Denpasar in Bali and Makassar in South Sulawesi.

FSAI 2018’s opening movie will be the 2017 romantic comedy Ali’s Wedding. Directed by and starring Australian actor, director and writer Osamah Sami, the movie is an intimate look into the everyday life of an Iraqi-Australian family and their surrounding community in North Melbourne, with a love story wedged in between. Ali’s Wedding is semi-autobiographical, as many of the movie’s events happened
in Sami’s life.

The movie tells us of significant characters and events that happened in the occasional poet’s life, such as his love life, his navigation through the conservative Middle-Eastern culture and being the son of a highly respected figure in his community.

It is the scenes that Ali shares with his father (played by Don Hany) — who is a tolerant cleric and highly revered at his local Mosque — that prove to be the most poignant: from Ali’s reluctance to fulfill his father’s wish that he pursue medicine, to how the cleric advises his son in his hours of need. The movie is dedicated to his father as well, who passed away in 2013.

All the truest suburban Australian tropes are featured in this movie: the heavy accents, the meat pies, the local fish and chip shop, the posters of Melbourne indie bands on the character’s walls, and of course, the red and black colors of North Melbourne AFL Team the Essendon Bombers, to which Sami is incredibly
devoted.

There is a nice balance of Muslim and Australian culture in this movie as both the young and old characters navigate through their lives with certain expectations from their families and culture.

Ali’s Wedding is a good, intimate lens for Indonesians to peer at the community lives of Australian Muslims, who are unified by the grace of their God and brotherhood.

Sami will attend the festival’s screenings of his movie on Thursday in Jakarta and in Denpasar, Bali on Saturday.

Other Australian flicks making their way onto the festival screens include Rip Tide, Killing Ground, Red Dog: True Blue, Dance Academy, OtherLife and short film Sol Bunker.

Fellow Australian director Rhiannon Bannenberg, whose movie Rip Tide is one of the festival’s featured movies, will also make a visit to our shores, alongside producers Steve Jaggi, Matthew Horrocks and Aidan O’Bryan.

Aside from the Australian pictures, three feature-length Indonesian movies will also be screened, mainly by Indonesians who are Australian alumni. Melbourne alumnus Mouly Surya’s critically acclaimed 2017 movie Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts is one of the movies that will be shown at the festival in all cities except Denpasar. The other two movies include Daniel Rifki’s nostalgic Melbourne Rewind and also Melawan Takdir (Fighting Fate) by Quraisy Mathar.

Six short Indonesian films will also be shown as part of the short film competition program.