The film is produced by Timothy White and Tenille Kennedy, with Georgia White as co-producer and Gary Bonney as Associate Producer.
Australian writer Roderick MacKay’s directorial debut The Furnace will be commercially released in UAE theatres from March 22. It is also slated to release in Egyptian theatres and other Arab countries. The Furnace will screen in English and Arabic subtitles.
Starring Ahmed Malek, David Wenham, Jay Ryan, Erik Thomson and Baykali Ganambarr among others, the film landed its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, and Arab premiere at El Gouna Film Festival, where it gained international critical acclaim.
The Furnace, set in the 1890s gold rush of Western Australia, is an unlikely hero’s tale, navigating greed and the search for identity in a new land. This feature film illuminates the forgotten history of Australia’s ‘Ghan’ cameleers, who were 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.
The film received production support from several institutes, including Screen Australia, in association with Screenwest, Lotterywest and the Western Australian Regional Film Fund. MAD Solutions handles the film’s distribution and marketing in the Arab World.
