Stolen Crown gold, a stranger on the run, and a young man who wants out of the desert: The Furnace sets a western in the Australian outback. Roderick MacKay directs this 2020 historical adventure, which runs 116 minutes and is led by David Wenham and Ahmed Malek.
What is The Furnace about?
The story follows a young Afghan cameleer who is desperate to leave the outback behind. His chance arrives in the form of a bushman he knows almost nothing about. The man is a fugitive, and he is carrying gold that was stolen from the Crown. The cameleer throws in his lot with him, hoping the partnership will be his way out. From that point the two travel together through harsh country, with the gold as both their prize and the reason they are being hunted. How far the young man can trust his companion, and what the journey will cost him, is what the film goes on to test.
About the cast
David Wenham and Ahmed Malek head the cast list, followed by Jay Ryan, Erik Thomson, Baykali Ganambarr, Samson Coulter, Gary Young and Mahesh Jadu. Roderick MacKay is the credited director.
Context & significance
The catalogue files The Furnace under five genres at once: adventure, drama, historical, thriller and western. That spread is a fair guide to what to expect. The western elements are familiar ones, such as stolen gold, a fugitive, pursuit across open land and an uneasy alliance, but the landscape is Australian desert and the lead character is an Afghan cameleer. Cameleers were the men who drove camel trains across the dry interior of Australia, and they rarely appear at the centre of a film like this. The outback also does a lot of work in the premise. The title suggests heat, the cameleer's whole aim is to get away from the place, and the distance he has to cover is the obstacle. The film is an Australian production with a running time of 116 minutes, and it was received reasonably well.
Watching The Furnace on Ktime
The Furnace is available in the K-Time catalogue. K-Time is a Persian-focused streaming service for the Iranian diaspora, with a Farsi interface throughout. This page is open to everyone; to play the film you need to log in to a K-Time account. The catalogue lists no Persian dub or Persian subtitles for this title, so it plays in its original version.