Australia II - the movie

No, luvvie, this is Australia:
BBC reports: The Combination, directed by David Field, is set in late 2005, when ugly race riots between white and Lebanese Australians flared at the city's Cronulla Beach.
They sparked a series of retaliatory attacks in which shops, churches and cars were targeted.
The film uses actual news footage from the riots as it follows the fortunes of a Lebanese Australian man who is trying to guide his younger brother away from ethnic gang violence.

I am a great fan of Australian films, perhaps because the dialogue, the characters and the stories are familiar to us as neighbours. It was saddening to learn that a gritty little Aussie film of some critical success has had its release canned through one distributor because of a gritty little bit of Aussie biffo:

The Australian reports pulling the movie about discrimination and violence has become an issue of discrimination under a back-drop of violence:

The film's writer and actor, George Basha, who plays a Lebanese-Australian fresh out of jail, said the decision to pull the film was "discriminatory".

"You've got 300 or 400 people in the cinema, and then you've got three or four kids, 15 and 16 years old, making a nuisance," Basha said. "The cinema is saying they were smoking in the cinema, and there were fights breaking out ... I've seen fights happen. I'm pretty sure those films didn't get closed down."

Police and the cinema operator disagree about the seriousness of the incidents last Thursday and Saturday that led to the decision to pull the film from all Greater Union screens in NSW.

Greater Union says there was an incident at one cinema on Thursday night, and another on Saturday night. One involved smoking in the cinema, the other was a fight that started after a girl asked other patrons to be quiet.

"A fight broke out. It went into the foyer, over the aero-bridge, and our security (footage) shows police arriving," Greater Union spokeswoman Melissa Kesby said. "We have people being put in police cars on the security footage.

"A staff member was hit in the head. We can't understand why police are saying that nothing happened, because that's not what our staff said."
[...]
The film was controversial before it was released. Two days before the first reviews were published, one of the film's stars, Ali Haidar, 19, was jailed for 29 weeks for assault. The film did not receive any government funding. It stars a cast of unknowns, who were recruited through ads in western Sydney newspapers, calling for "young men of Middle Eastern appearance".

The film's distributor, Allanah Zitserman said the team behind the film was "absolutely devastated".

"It was connecting with audiences," Ms Zitserman said. "It's had so much critical acclaim.

"We understand where Greater Union is coming from. They have said the health and safety of their staff has been compromised.

"I know they didn't make the decision lightly. We spoke to them for hours, trying to find a way for this not to happen. They really did feel that this was serious, and that's why they've taken this approach."

The Combination is still showing at Hoyts in NSW and the ACT; at Hoyts and Greater Union in Victoria and Queensland; and at Palace theatres in Victoria and NSW.

Outside a Hoyts screening yesterday, Kamal Nassouh said the film condemned violence.

Review in The Age:

In an impressive directorial debut, veteran actor David Field (Two Hands, Chopper, Blackjack) fashions a gritty, topical, effective film from a screenplay by Basha, whose story — a little too obviously inspired by American History X — is drawn from his own troubled youth and the racial violence that tore through Cronulla in 2005.

Field extracts solid performances from his leads, especially Doris Younane as the long-suffering mother, though some supporting characters grate, coming off as mouthpieces for the communal fear white suburbanites have about ethnic youth gangs.

That said, the film works dramatically, delivering a series of well-aimed emotional gut punches and a pungent message about how ethnic gangs insult the values of the communities they claim to represent.

Pity the cliched trailer makes it look like it's a Hollywood gang thing in Compton - it sounds much better than that.