Jan
14
MA 15+
Doors open at at 6:30 pm
Director: Roderick MacKay
Cast: David Wenham, Jay Ryan, Mahesh Jadu
Running Time: 116 mins
Set in the 1890s gold rush of Western Australia, THE FURNACE is an unlikely hero’s tale, navigating greed and the search for identity in a new land. This film illuminates the forgotten history of Australia’s ‘Ghan’ cameleers – predominantly Muslim and Sikh men from India, Afghanistan, and Persia – who traversed the nation’s vast desert interior, forming unique bonds with local Aboriginal people. To escape a harsh existence and return home, a young Afghan cameleer partners with a mysterious bushman on the run with two 400oz Crown-marked gold bars. Together the unlikely pair must outwit a zealous police sergeant and his troopers in a race to reach a secret furnace – the one place where they can safely reset the bars to remove the mark of the Crown.