Paradise Road

Paradise Road (1997) is a war drama you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Bruce Beresford and produced in Australia and the US, the film stars Glenn Close, Frances McDormand, Cate Blanchett and Julianna Margulies.

February 1942. Japan takes Singapore. A group of women from Britain, the US, the Netherlands and Australia escape on a transport ship that is promptly bombed. Those who survive wash ashore and end up in a Japanese POW camp on Sumatra. Conductor Adrienne (Glenn Close) proposes a vocal orchestra — no instruments, just voices arranged in parts. It is the one thing the guards cannot confiscate.

The film draws on the memoir of survivor Betty Jeffrey and on the real Sumatra vocal orchestra. Beresford keeps the tone steady and unsentimentaI: this is not a story about grand heroism but about small daily acts of refusal — and how music can be one of them. Stream Paradise Road (1997) online on iFILM.