Lucky Miles: All The Way To Manila

In this year’s CineManila International Film Festival, filmmakers from all over the world flocked to Manila to screen their films for the Filipino audience. One of the festival’s highlights was a special feature of five films from Australia. On awards night, among all of the actors, it was Filipino-American Kenneth Moraleda who received the best actor nod from the jury for his role in Lucky Miles.

The film Lucky Miles, directed by Australian filmmaker Michael Rowland and co-written with Helen Barnes, follows three men making their way – illegally – into Australia. In the film, Moraleda plays the lead character, a Cambodian who believes he will find his father in Australia. The men enter the country via a fishing boat and are dropped off at the west side of the country – a desert. “There are three guys with only one bottle of water that have nothing in common and don’t particularly like each other, but they learn that without each other they are nothing,” Rowland says of the film’s story.

“Without each other, they won’t survive,” Moraleda adds.

“It’s a very serious subject, but our film is a comedy,” says Rowland. “At a lot of the screenings we had in Australia, the people were hesitant to laugh until they eventually give in,” says Moraleda of the film’s controversial political content.

“It’s like making a joke about a death in the family,” Rowland adds. “You have to be very good and sensitive to do that.”

Rowland shares that the statement he wants to make with Lucky Miles is: “We all share a planet and we’ve got to get along.” After some thought, he adds, “I don’t know if that’s political. Seems like common sense.”

The Australian audience seems to have appreciated the filmmaker’s message. “It’s been overwhelmingly good,” says Rowland. The film even won the audience award in the Sydney Film Festival, an award which is rarely given to Australian films.

The journey to producing Lucky Miles was a long one – seven years, to be exact. Director Rowland explains that this is the normal pace of filmmaking in Australia.

“The first time I came across the project was to read a draft of the script,” says Moraleda. Years later, he was again contacted to do another script reading, this time for prospective investors and funding bodies. After that, another couple of years passed. “I was starting to worry that I would be too old to do the role,” says the actor.

“Ken is a great character actor,” says Rowland of his decision to finally cast Moraleda in the lead role.

Moraleda takes great care in preparing for his roles. For Lucky Miles, he spent a whole year with the Cambodian man upon whom his character is based, learning the language and the proper accents. During that time, Moraleda was performing in The Lion King. “I was playing an animal, then I was playing a human being, then I had to go back to playing an animal.”

The actor shares, “The funny thing about it was there were six Cambodians in the film and I was the only one that wasn’t and I was the lead.” While this definitely added pressure to his performance, he also appreciated the instant coaches he had on set.

Filipino by blood, Moraleda was born in America. He now considers Australia his home, though he visits the Philippines every few years. Active in the Australian theater scene as a part of the famed Sydney Theater Company, Moraleda studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts, the top acting school in Australia. He has been acting for 12 years, appearing in many diverse roles – from a soldier and a ghost to an Eskimo and a hyena. “I find it fun to put myself in another world just for a brief amount of time,” says the dedicated actor.

Lucky Miles, aside from tackling a controversial topic, is also a breakthrough film with regards to casting – giving the lead role, as well as many of the key roles in the film, to multi-cultural actors.         

“What was special about the movie was that the three lead characters were not blond and blue-eyed,” says Moraleda, pointing out that “the cultural make-up of Australia is highly multi-cultural.”

In an interview back in Australia, Rowland was asked why he made the choice to cast multi-cultural actors. In response, Rowland told the journalist to look at all the people walking in the street. The two believe that the trend of multi-cultural casting is already underway, with more opportunities for actors of all cultural backgrounds. “Australia is changing and we’re part of the change,” he says.

On showing the film in Manila, Rowland says, “In Australia the question was will people hate us for making a funny film on a very serious subject. In Manila the question is did we make it funny enough.”

It is not the director’s first time in the country. His first visit to the Philippines was as a cultural exchange student when he was 19 years old. He remembers leaving the country only two weeks before the first People Power revolution. “That changed my life.”

“The audience we had in Manila was very responsive. It was a relief but at the same time such a joy to hear people laughing along with you,” says Moraleda, who was particularly excited and nervous to show the film in the Philippines because his toughest critic was watching – his mother.

Moraleda’s mother, as well as many other critics, definitely enjoyed Lucky Miles, a sentiment affirmed by Moraleda winning CineManila’s best actor award. “It was a great honor and it came as a shock,” he says of the award.

“It’s been such a privilege to make Lucky Miles. It’s been such an adventure to go around the world,” says Rowland. The film has also been screened and has received critical acclaim in prestigious festivals in Chicago, Dublin, Abu Dhabi, Pusan, LA, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Singapore, and Russia. “It’s gone around the world and people have laughed and cried everywhere,” shares Rowland.

“Each and every time Michael gets really nervous about how the response of a different audience, a different culture, will be,” says Moraleda. “But it always turns out being great. People are responsive to it.”

Rowland adds, “I think the three main characters, led by Ken, just really do represent everyone.”

Both Moraleda and Rowland are busy with new projects. They are also hoping that the Lucky Miles DVD copy will be released internationally soon. “We’re still waiting for it to be pirated,” they joke.