I am finding two themes at this year‘s Melbourne Film Festival – people dislocated from their land and people abusing the power they have been given.

This drama with the feel of a documentary is one of the former. Written and directed by Akio Fujimoto with a largely Japanese crew, it is all about the Rohingya people from what is now called Myanmar. They are part of an ethnic minority that has been declared stateless and so inhabit immense refugee camps where they are not allowed to work, waiting for the wheels of bureaucracy to allow them to be relocated.

In one of these camps in Bangladesh, we see two siblings, Shafi (Muhammad Shofik Rias Uddin) and Somira (Shomira Rias Uddin). They, with their auntie, make the choice that many do, to try and make their own way to Malaysia via an ‘agent’. They leave, carrying their possessions in a few plastic bags.

This is the point where I realised this wasn’t a documentary, it had been so naturalistic that it seemed like we were watching real stories unfold. On the boat, they seem to be getting nowhere and when they finally land on some unspecified tropical beach, the intervention of authorities means that some make it and others don’t. The two children are carried a hore and team up with three young men to continue a journey that understandably takes him through many perils.

I won’t detail any more of the plot, as you honestly don’t know whether this will be all tragedy or contain some hope. What is challenging is watching the two young people more or less left to their own devices and how vulnerable they are. Although there are definitely predatory people they meet along the way, we don’t have to to experience what must be a real danger, sexual predation.

The performances of the child actors, who I assume are real siblings, are astoundingly naturalistic. It’s not a story, in reality, that has any happy ending although Fujimoto does give us some moments of hopefulness.

I’m not sure if it needs the last scene. It works to neatly bring an element of the story full circle but introduced a small hint of cuteness in a film that didn’t need it and had enough genuine innocence and delight.