The Year Of Living Dangerously is about a young Australian reporter (Gibson) on his first major international assignment in the political turbulence of Indonesia in the dying days of Sukarno's regime and the bloody military coup that took place and centres around a love story between him and a British embassy official (Weaver). The film famously, and uniquely, stars Linda Hunt as the male Australian-Chinese dwarf Billy Kwan, a role for which she won a Best Support Actress Oscar, and it is Kwan who carries the movie's social conscience.