S ogeri elder Sine Boboro was just a baby when the Japanese war planes were making their bombing raids over Port Moresby in 1942. The terror of that time – as told by his late mother Tabu Ivai who would clasp him to her chest as the bombs fell and the planes crashed around the village – is fresh in the 83-year- old’s mind again after starring as a World War II hero in the soon-to- be released PNG film Papa Buka . “When I was in the act there (on the movie set), I was thinking of my mother,” Sine says, getting tearful with the memory. “I was thinking of her carrying me as a child, holding me. The whole story from WWII my mother told me; she was there, and I was very small. I was
The film’s Indian director of photography Yedhu Radhakrishnan (right) and cameraman Fyodor Sam Brook on location at Bomana War Cemetery “More than 1000 Indian soldiers are believed to have died in PNG both as prisoners of war and while fighting with British troops during the conflict, but the graves of only 337 have been identified”
thinking, ‘that’s your story’.” In the film – PNG’s first to be submitted as a Hollywood Oscar
contender in the international feature film category – Sine plays the title character ‘Papa Buka’, a wise old
former Fuzzy Wuzzy Angel from the Kokoda Track who guides two Indian historians as they search for forgotten
The cast chat around the campfire in this scene shot at a pretend village – Defrika Tabu – built by local Koiari families within Varirata National Park
VOLUME 43 2025
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