‘Hope’ doco about SIEVX disaster showing @ Bellingen April 4, 2009 with talk by the filmmaker Steve Thoma

This doco about the journey of Amal Basry, one of the few survivors of the SIEVX disaster – where 353 asylum seekers en route to Australia died -  got rave reviews on release last year (see SMH Review June 19, 2008).

Filmaker Steve Thomas will be at the Bellingen screening and will talk about the film and his experience of making it.

Proceeds to maintenance of the SIEVX Memorial in Canberra.

From the official website:

Amal Basry watched The Titanic at a cinema in Baghdad the night before she fled Iraq. 18 months later the people smuggling boat she was on sank between Indonesia and Australia. 353 people drowned. Amal survived by clinging to the floating body of a dead woman for 22 hours. Now Amal fights to ensure that the disaster is not forgotten, reunite her family and ‘find what it was I lost in the ocean’.