I wish I knew the names of every single person whose unwarranted death is represented by this film. To honor them. To remember. Instead, we do have this version of a story, which in itself is a stark reminder of the horror of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. Intelligent viewers are usually fully aware that any film cannot possibly contain all the details, nuances and even accuracies of a great story. The film does more than merely insinuate the negligence of Australia, the US, and so forth, though some could miss this altogether.Those of us who were the same age as the journalists around which the story focuses have been well-trained to read between the lines, or view between the frames as it were. So, you can view this as a suspenseful tale half-told, or whatever you wish. All war is atrocious. Here, one seemingly small story resonates through the decades, enough to make us want to know more. Hopefully stories like this will help prevent the world sitting idly by as similar atrocities continue elsewhere. Peace. (Would it could occur everywhere.) Mr. LaPaglia brings a wealth of understanding and compassion to his role as the lone Australian who embarks on a search to learn the truth about five missing Australian journalists. Told through the eyes of a little girl, now an adult, who witnessed the massacre of innocents, this film is indeed riveting. Kudos to the director Robert Connolly and all the cast and crew of this remarkable, though gut-wrenching, film - Balibo.Search online for the article titled East Timor Questions & Answers by Stephen R. Shalom, Noam Chomsky, & Michael Albert, Oct 99. It will fill in some gaps.

Beside being a fan of Anthony Lapaglia I think he is a very under rated actor. But he won the Best Actor at the AFI awards last Saturday. And I believe he had to relearn his Australian accent having spent so many years in the US of A. From a historical point of view I remember the year but had no idea Roger East was involved in the search for the five missing journalists.But I do remember that Australia was viewing Indonesia with a wary eye. They had a well equipped Army and Whitlam had just been elected as PM. And we had just pulled out of Vietnam. And the Fetilin were considered communists (like the North Vietnamese) hence I believe Australia's lack of support for them.I recall one military expert warning us, Indonesia could prove a threat to Australia one day? Timor is only about 70 miles, I believe from Australia's Northern coast line.However, the film being set in East Timor was very well put together and edited. Considering it was on a strict budget, and the environment they were filming in is still a sensitive part of the world. Since the film was screened one Indonesian man has stepped forward to say he was there and executed the Bilabo five under orders (of course!) although his account has been refuted (of course!) by the 'powers that be' in Indonesia.Now they have banned it seems to suggest they don't like it and I wonder why? Possibly because with the Muslim terrorists active in the area could drive them to more acts of violence against Australia.However, cinematography, music and also the script certainly should commend it to serious film buffs. I found the accents of some of the East Timorese when speaking English, sometimes hard to understand, but that might be just me of course. I don't consider it a spoiler though.I hope it gets nominated for the Academy Awards certainly Anthony's acting deserves some recognition. Well done all those East Timorese who stood in to take on their roles when those events and subsequent atrocities are still fresh in the older generation's minds.I hired it on DVD by the way in Australia.

In the tradition of The Killing Fields, this is a very good film bringing atrocities and the silent complicity of Western governments in those atrocities to a wider audience. Students of writers such as John Pilger will be aware of what happened after the Indonesians invaded East Timor in 1975, and how after the invasion the Australian government did nothing other than to take a stake in the oil and gas reserves around the island. Anthony La Paglia plays the central role of journalist Roger East who goes to East Timor to investigate the disappearance of five journalists who have preceded him there to report on the impending Indonesian invasion. The fate of the five is pretty obvious from the start but we are drawn in to joining East in his quest to find out the 'how' and the 'when' if not 'what' befell them.We are not given much explanation of what East has been through before to make him state halfway through the film that he cannot carry on and wants to return home to Australia nor into what makes him undergo a complete volte face in the last twenty minutes and take the insane risk of staying in the face of a brutal Indonesian invasion. This is a weak point of the film that might well be explained in a longer director's cut. That being said, there is a slow section in the middle showing how East gets through the jungle back from Balibo to Dilli that could have usefully been trimmed or cut altogether.For all those criticisms this is an absorbing and thoughtful account of what went on in a little-known part of the world under the noses of the West (which did nothing to stop a massacre). La Paglia's performance is never less than solid, and Walter Isaacs clearly has a great future ahead of him. If it falls a little short of being a great film this is still one that is worth the price of admission.

As someone with a long-standing interest in the history of East Timor, I had mixed feelings about this film, and how the people and events would be depicted. However, Robert Connolly did a great job, considering all of the constraints of a limited budget that he had. It did not go into minute detail about the historical events, but nor did it dumb down and sex up.What happened to the Balibo Five and Roger East is only a very small fraction of the story of what happened in East Timor in 1975, and there will be accusations that the deaths of half a dozen Westerners are given more prominence than what happened to a far greater number of East Timorese. However, the East Timorese actors in the film, none of whom were professional actors, were tremendous - not least as they were reenacting events that they and their families were familiar with.