Balibo occupies a special place in Robert Connolly’s evolving career. It was his third feature as director and significantly upped the ante. It came a decade after The Boys had established him as one of the Australian industry’s leading creative producers, as well as cementing his longstanding collaboration with John Maynard. The commitment to telling urgent and often politically sensitive stories drove the project.

It deals with the deaths of the Balibo 5 in East Timor in 1975, and the subsequent investigation by Roger East (Anthony LaPaglia) and José Ramos-Horta (Oscar Isaac) into an infamous war crime that no government really wanted resurrected. The top-notch Australian collaborators showed the stature that Connolly commands within this country: co-writer David Williamson, cinematographer Tristan Milani, editor Nick Meyers, and composer Lisa Gerrard. The film went on to win a multitude of awards at the AACTAs, the Film Critics’ Circle, and IF Awards, which demonstrates the respect in which Connolly is held as a teller of inconvenient truths.