Joe Leahy’s Neighbours

CINÉMA DU RÉEL GRAND PRIX

The son of an Australian explorer (appearing in First Contact) and a native Papua New Guinean woman, Joe Leahy runs a prosperous coffee plantation and lives in a Western life style. He owes his social status partly to his skill in profiting from his immediate neighbours, the Ganiga, who, fifty years after the whites landed, still depend on their traditional tribal system, but are also tempted by material well-being and consumer society. An observation of Joe Leahy’s sometimes comical dealings with his neighbours, the film is simultaneously an excentric and explosive description of the problem of colonialism.