Balibo (2009)

The events surrounding Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in October 1975 remain one of the more disturbing episodes in late twentieth-century geopolitics, and one that received remarkably little attention in the Western press for decades. Five Australian-based journalists, working for television news organisations, were killed in the town of Balibo while attempting to document the Indonesian military build-up. Their deaths, and the circumstances surrounding them, were disputed, minimised and, many would argue, deliberately buried by governments on both sides of the Tasman. The six men at the centre of this story, the Balibo Five plus Reuters correspondent Roger East, murdered in Dili shortly after, became a cause in Australia that quietly refused to go away. It took more than thirty years for an Australian coroner to formally find that the journalists had been killed by Indonesian forces, and it is against that backdrop of delayed reckoning that director Robert Connolly brought the story to the screen.

Connolly is a filmmaker whose career has kept returning to politically charged Australian material, and Balibo is arguably the most ambitious project he had taken on at the time of its release. Produced through Arenafilm and Cinimod Film with support from Content International, the film was shot partly on location in Timor-Leste itself, which lends the production an authenticity that studio-bound recreations rarely achieve. The film draws on the book Cover-Up by journalist Jill Jolliffe, who investigated the killings for years, and it weaves together two timelines: the final weeks of the five younger journalists as they head towards Balibo, and the mission of veteran correspondent Roger East, played by Anthony LaPaglia, four weeks later. LaPaglia is an actor with real authority and a habit of finding the worn, stubborn humanity in men under pressure. Alongside him, a notably early screen appearance comes from Oscar Isaac, then still building his profile, as the young José Ramos-Horta, the East Timorese independence leader who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and later serve as his country's president. Nathan Phillips, Damon Gameau and Nick Farnell fill out the ensemble as members of the group of journalists whose fate East is sent to uncover.

For those interested in how Australian cinema handles difficult national and political subject matter, it is worth comparing Balibo with some very different examples from the same filmmaking culture. You Won't Be Alone (2022) is another Australian production that takes a formally unusual approach to heavy material, while on the more visceral, genre end of the spectrum, both Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) show how capacious Australian filmmaking can be. Balibo sits well away from those films in tone and ambition, closer in spirit to the kind of polished but unremarkable political thriller that sometimes finds its nerve and becomes something more than its genre suggests. Whether it fully achieves that is very much the question.

A-Z World Movie Tour Timor-Leste Balibo (2009) is a powerful, heartbreaking film based on the true and tragic story of the Balibo Five, Australian-based journalists killed while reporting on Indonesia’s 1975 invasion of East Timor. It doesn’t shy away from the horror or the political cover-up that followed, and it deserves credit for bringing this often-overlooked chapter of history to the screen. Anthony LaPaglia gives a standout performance as Roger East, the grizzled, idealistic journalist who travels to Dili to investigate the truth, only to become another victim of the conflict. His quiet determination and growing sense of dread anchor the film with real emotional weight. The production values are strong, the cinematography captures both the tropical beauty and mounting tension of East Timor, and the soundtrack is haunting and effective, adding urgency and sorrow where needed. You can feel the chaos, the fear, the moral outrage simmering beneath every scene. And the film’s commitment to honouring the real people involved is evident in every frame. That said, the pacing is uneven, and the narrative structure can be confusing at times, jumping between timelines, blending dramatization with documentary-style footage, and occasionally leaving you unsure who’s who or when things are happening. While clearly trying to build suspense and emotional impact, it sometimes sacrifices clarity. The mix of fact and fiction, though well-intentioned, blurs just enough to make the story harder to follow than it should be. Still, Balibo is an important film, well-acted, passionately made, and morally urgent. Not perfect in execution, but vital viewing for its courage, heart, and the truth it refuses to let be forgotten.

I think that tension between the film's moral seriousness and its structural untidiness is genuinely frustrating, because the story it is telling demands to be heard clearly. When a film is working this hard to honour real people and a real injustice, the last thing you want is to feel lost in the chronology at the moments that should hit hardest. But the performances, LaPaglia's especially, carry enough weight to pull you through the rougher passages. If you have never come across the story of the Balibo Five before, this film will stay with you regardless of its imperfections, which is perhaps the best thing you can say about any piece of political cinema. Some stories are simply too important to be left untold, even if the telling is a little ragged at the edges.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 2009  | Watched: 2025-09-11

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Trailer

▶ Watch the official trailer for Balibo (2009) on YouTube

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Buy: Apple TV Store · Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Stream: fuboTV
Physical: Amazon US

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