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10. A Lion Returns
There’s lots of talking in writer/director Serhat Caradee’s Sydney-set family drama, with almost the entire first act consisting of a single dialogue scene in the back of a car. Jamal (Tyler De Nawi) is the black sheep of his family, to say the least, secretly returning home to Sydney’s western suburbs to visit his dying mother after joining Islamic State in Syria.
The radicalised Jamal engages in long and tense debates with his kith and kin, during skilfully constructed dialogue exchanges that toss around big discussions about motivations people have for joining groups like Isis. The pangs of pain and betrayal are never far from the surface, with a baffled and heartbroken family unable to separate the personal and the political.