Balibo (2009)

Today's movie of the day = Balibo. It also shows up as The Balibo Conspiracy and is the same film. This one stars Anthony LaPaglia (JLPs brother) and Oscar Isaac. This was another Australian film recommended by @matt_dyson_

The film is based on the true story of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor back in 1975. It follows five Australian reporters as they document the invasion. Timor had been recently liberated from Portuguese control by this point.

I must admit that I had to look up where Timor was. I know a lot of geography but didn't know that it was right off of the northwest coast of Australia. (Yes, I knew where Indonesia was).

I think the reason 'Conspiracy' was added to the title (in some cases) is that the main story of the invasion was buried for over thirty years, even though 183,000 lost their lives.

Overall it was a pretty good film. It raised awareness in me that this happened and I had no clue about it. As a historian it is disheartening to think that such a big world event was swept under the rug. It would be a good look into Asian history as it opened my eyes to what happened.

Yes, I'll recommend this film but I do so as a historian. It is very sad to see what happened to the country and that it took until 2002 to be recognized as it's own nation after being controlled by the Portuguese and then the Indonesians.

P.S. the only place I could find it streaming online was Amazon Prime using IMDB.

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