Film

The Diplomat (2000)

Director: Tom Zubrycki

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

After the fall of Indonesia's President Suharto comes a timely documentary portrait of Nobel Peace prizewinner José Ramos Horta. East Timor, the former Portuguese colony, experienced a brief taste of freedom before the Indonesian invasion of 1975 forced Ramos Horta into a 24-year exile. The film shows both the public and private face of a man who gave up the gun for an ambassador's suit, intercutting his tireless campaigning with b/w footage of military atrocities. While the film doesn't examine reasons for the invasion, or the political and commercial motivation for the world's apparent apathy, it gives insight into the character of this tenacious and charismatic diplomat as well a being a paean to his eventual success in securing the freedom of his homeland.

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