By Jono Hutchison
Australian film Balibo tells the story of five journalists, including a New Zealander, who were killed in East Timor in 1975.
The movie is released here next Thursday, and has been banned in Indonesia. But its director Robert Connolly says Indonesians are watching it anyway.
In 1975, Roger East went to East Timor to investigate what happened to five journalists - it's their story which inspired director Robert Connolly to make Balibo.
"I found it really upsetting, and I was surprised it wasn't more widely known," says Connolly. "But then I started travelling up to East Timor and I fell in love with this country."
The film crew travelled there to shoot on location.
"We'd go and we'd film in a small town, and all the locals would come out and act in the film - people that'd never been in front of a camera before. I mean, I found that incredibly moving and that authenticity was something I wanted as a film-maker."
Connolly also worked with the victims' families, including the relatives of Kiwi cameraman Gary Cunningham.
"His family were kind of, so open to helping us understand what he was like," says Connolly, "and the actor, Gyton Grantley, who played him, had incredible access to them, and to discover little things about him that he might not have known otherwise."
Balibo has been banned in Indonesia, but that hasn't stopped people watching pirated copies.
"There's a great irony for me," says Connolly, "that the Indonesian government tolerates piracy, so there's pirate DVD shops all through the country. They're happy for people to infringe copyright - but that that illegal mechanism for infringing copyright has become a means for Indonesian people to see a film the Government doesn't want them to see."
Click here to watch the full, uncut interview with Connolly.
Last year, shortly after Balibo was screened in Parliament House in Canberra, a war crimes investigation was launched into the killings - a victory, Connolly says, in the long struggle to tell this story.
It is in New Zealand cinemas next week.
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