A boy who is believed to bring bad luck to everyone around him leads his family and two new friends through Laos to find a new home. After a calamity-filled journey through a land scarred by the legacy of war, to prove he's not bad luck he builds a giant rocket to enter the most exciting and dangerous competition of the year: the Rocket Festival.

Good-natured Ahlo has no idea of the tragic circumstances which surrounded his birth. His childhood seems to be ill-fated: when his family has to leave their village to make way for a dam, a terrible accident follows. Together with his father and grandmother, he is sent to a camp where he incurs the wrath of the other camp-dwellers. They soon make up their mind that Ahlo is cursed and brings bad luck. His only friend is Kia, who lives with her uncle Purple and knows all too well what it’s like to be an outcast. The group’s search for a new home leads them through the Laotian outback. Here, they come across a rocket festival that holds an entire village on tenterhooks. At last, Ahlo sees a chance to prove he is lucky rather than cursed and he takes part in the dangerous competition. The Rocket combines this boy’s moving story with a fascinating insight into living conditions in a country shaped by poverty and superstition. Kim Mordaunt had to shoot parts of his film in Thailand, to escape censure from the authoritarian Laotian government.