The Furnace

116 min | 10 Dec 2020

Strong themes and violence

1897 Western Australia. To escape a harsh existence and return home, a young Afghan cameleer partners with a mysterious bushman.

Additional Language: Badimaya.

1897 Western Australia. To escape a harsh existence and return home, a young Afghan cameleer partners with a mysterious bushman on the run with two 400oz Crown-marked gold bars. Together the unlikely pair must outwit a zealous police sergeant and his troopers in a race to reach a secret furnace—the one place where they can safely reset the bars to remove the mark of the Crown. The film is an unlikely hero’s tale, navigating greed and the search for identity in a new land. It illuminates the forgotten history of Australia’s “Ghan” cameleers, predominantly Muslim and Sikh men from India, Afghanistan and Persia, who opened up the Nation’s desert interior, thereby forming unique bonds with local Aboriginal people.

Director
Roderick MacKay
Cast
David Wenham, Erik Thomson, Jay Ryan, Mahesh Jadu, Goran D. Kleut
Genre
History, Western
Rating
MA (Strong themes and violence)
Release Date
10 December 2020
Runtime
116 min
Language
English, Punjabi, Cantonese, Pashto