Ab Film Review & The Last New Wave

With her delicate and gentle drama Damage, director Madeleine Blackwell has crafted a parable that layers grief, trauma, a sense of location and what it means to live away from home, and more into an emotionally enriching experience. Damage follows Ali, played by Ali Al Jenabi, a refugee in Australia using a friends taxi license to earn some small aspect of a living. As he drives the streets of Adelaide at night, he picks up Esther, played by Madeleine's mother Imelda Bourke.Esther is a lost soul who's unsure of the name of where she needs to go, and certainly has no idea of how to get there. Equally so, Ali is unfamiliar with the streets, relying solely on a soulless GPS device to guide him where he needs to go. At first, their relationship is a fractured one, with Ali quickly becoming frustrated with Esther's inability to tell him where he needs to go. Equally so, Esther's frustration is levelled at how Ali is treating her, as well as her ambivalence in regards to his accent.On paper, Damage suggests that i