AMICHAI – In Development
FEATURE FILM IN DEVELOPMENT
GENRE: HISTORICAL DRAMA
DURATION: 105mins approximately
TAG LINE: ONE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
SYNOPSIS
An Indigenous Australian boy, witnesses the massacre of his parents in the Northern Territory in 1908. Placed in a mission school run by a fundamentalist preacher, his intellectual brilliance is rewarded with beatings, phrenology experiments and isolation. He escapes into the bush but his deteriorating eyesight and yearning for books lead to his failure as a bushman. Starving, he steals food from Rachel, an eccentric Jewish widow who is a refugee from the Russian pogroms and hides from her demons in an underground bunker. While initially threatening him with a shotgun, their mutual loneliness and common suffering overcomes mistrust and they forge a mother/son bond. Rachel bestows upon him a new name: Amichai, Hebrew for “my people/nation lives”. This odd pair of outcasts incites the hatred and racism of the surrounding white community and Amichai is thrown into an asylum where he risks his life to save a young white girl. As Rachel is battling the preacher to have Amichai released, a fire burns the asylum down, while Amichai escapes only to confront yet another form of imprisonment. Rachel helps Amichai study by correspondence, and he graduates, but is refused entry to a Melbourne Teacher’s College on the basis of his skin colour. He becomes a tent boxer in country Victoria to feed himself and his anger. With the help of an Aboriginal tent fighter, and Rachel’s encouragement, he finds his true purpose as a political activist and ultimately triumphs over his enemies at an historical protest against the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews, lead by William Cooper of the Australian Aborigines’ League in 1938.
PROPOSED CAST
Geoffrey Rush [The King's Speech, Pirates of the Caribbean], Helen Mirren [The Queen, The Last Station], John Jarratt [Wolf Creek, Australia]. Because of the nature of the film we will have the ability to showcase some of Australia’s talented Indigenous actors.
