Rodd Rathjen to Direct Film Adaptation of Behrouz Boochani's Acclaimed Book

Rodd Rathjen has joined Behrouz Boochani and producers to bring the ground-breaking book No Friend But The Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison to the screen.

The film has been announced as one of the selected projects to take part in Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) International Financing Forum (IFF) in September, with Rodd working in close collaboration with Behrouz and writer / producer Ákos Armont.

Behrouz will take on the roles of story consultant and associate producer, joining the writer’s room and contributing to scripting, while Rodd joins as director.

Discussions are underway with other international filmmakers to join the team. The project is jointly led by Aurora Films, Hoodlum Entertainment and Sweetshop & Green.

Behrouz, who was granted refugee status in New Zealand last month, has been working closely with the Australian producers to develop his story for the screen, with support from Screen Australia. 

Behrouz said: ”Writing has always been an act of resistance. When I started to work on the book, six years ago, no one had really heard about Manus Island. Today the book is published in 25 countries and in multiple languages. I hope that by now adapting the book into a film we will make this story even more accessible to audiences and continue to generate discussion and change for the world's refugee communities. I hope the film will inspire others [to] speak out and share their stories; to talk and write about their experiences of survival. I am very happy to be working with Rodd and Ákos to develop this story and shape it into something very special. This is not just my story. This story belongs to the almost 80 million people around the world who are currently stateless.”

Rodd Rathjen said: “'I'm really excited to join such an important project with an amazing team. In particular, I'm looking forward to collaborating with Behrouz to ensure the film retains his voice and becomes a unique and profound cinematic experience.”

Behrouz Boochani is a Kurdish Iranian journalist, author and poet who fled Iran in 2012 after the newspaper he co-founded was raided by the Iranian government. As a refugee, he attempted to travel to Australia by boat from Indonesia to seek asylum but was intercepted and imprisoned on an Australian-run offshore processing camp on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. Boochani would spend almost seven years confined in offshore detention. His book No Friend But The Mountains is a vivid and lyrical account of his harrowing experience.

The book was arduously typed out on a contraband phone via WhatsApp in Farsi and translated by Omid Tofighian (Research and Translation Associate on the film), all in defiance of the system detaining him. It was dangerous work. The mere existence of the book is testament to his resilience.

Behrouz’s book famously went on to win one of Australia’s top literary awards in 2019 – the Victorian Prize for Literature - while he remained detained on Manus Island, and ironically, he accepted the award via phone link.

The book No Friend But The Mountains is an international bestseller and is sold in 19 countries. It has been recognised by The Guardian as “a cacophony that evokes the harsh physical reality, uncertainty and the incessant abuses practiced in Manus Island prison – [he] deconstructs the established principles of genres as he employs them, thus positioning his book as an anti-genre.”

In addition to winning Australia's richest literary prize, the Victorian Prize for Literature, the book was also awarded the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize for Non-Fiction, the Special Award in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards, the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) for General non-fiction book of the year and the Australian National Biography Award.


Behrouz publishes regularly with The Guardian, and his writing also features in The Saturday Paper, Huffington Post, The Financial Times and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was recently interviewed for a profile by The New York Times. He writes about statelessness, of extra-legal limbo, and is an outspoken defender of human rights.

Rodd Rathjen is an Australian film director and a graduate of the prestigious Victorian College of the Arts (School of Film & Television). His debut feature, Buoyancy, premiered at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival in Panorama, where it won the Ecumenical Jury Prize. 

A powerful dramatization of human trafficking within Thailand’s offshore fishing fleet and shot largely in Khmer and Thai, Buoyancy was selected as Australia’s foreign-language Oscar contender. The film was also awarded an AACTA for Best Indie Film and an Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Youth Feature Film.

Rodd first came to critical attention with his breakout short Tau Seru, which was selected to premiere at Cannes in 2013 as part of Critics Week. It went on to win awards at top festivals around the world, including the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Rodd is currently also in development on feature film Rizgari with producer Grant Hill (The Thin Red Line, Titanic). The story follows the fight against ISIS in Kurdistan in 2014.

Sweetshop & Green, Aurora Films and Hoodlum Entertainment are partnering to develop and produce the film with the aim of shooting in mid-2021. In a joint statement, Gal Greenspan, managing director at Sweetshop & Green, Tracey Robertson executive producer and co-founder, Hoodlum Entertainment and Antony Waddington of Aurora Films said, “No Friend But The Mountains is a defining tale of our time, about the power of one man’s resistance. It tells the incredible true story of Behrouz Boochani's courage and triumph over despair, as he gives voice to the many voiceless. We are thrilled to join Behrouz and Rodd in crafting a powerful film to inspire audiences everywhere.”

Photographer: David Collins