Billal

Tom Zubrycki was intending to make a documentary film about unemployed youth in Sydney’s western suburbs when he came across the Etters, a Lebanese Muslim family who had migrated to Australia. What was initially meant to be a film exploring migration and class relationships in urban Australia became something else when the second son, Billal, was the victim of a racially motivated attack which left him brain damaged. As Zubrycki allows his camera to explore each individual family member’s response to the accident, the film becomes an exploration of grief and suffering, and a tribute to the young man’s attempt to adjust to his new situation. Billal and his family infuse their stories with humour and insight, and as the film explores Billal’s rehabilitation, it also becomes an absurd commentary on the under-resourced Australian public health system. “Billal” is then a documentary which is largely about family, and of how a family deals with the tragic consequences of violence. But it is also, of course, a documentary which with subtlety and piquancy, illuminates the destructive effects of racism.