It is an interesting option for the largest cinematic festival in the Netherlands to close it with a film that explicitly condemns the Dutch colonial violence in Indonesia, but one can always expect interesting options from Rotterdam International Film Festival. The closing movie for this year, Molly of Syria‘s “This city is a battlefield“It takes place in Jakarta in 1946, when nationalist leaders declared independence, but the city is still under Dutch control, with tensions escalating to bloody clashes and violence.
Talk to diverse Before the festival, Syria says it does not believe that “children learn about Indonesia in schools in the Netherlands” but it was surprised by the talks she had since its arrival in Rotterdam. “There are different versions of history depending on those who tell him. I have met people who have links to this part of the country’s history, whose grandparents in the Dutch army were stationed in Indonesia at that time. Therefore, for good or for the bad, it is a common history and also a very recent, So everything is still interconnected.
“We do not have a radiator as film makers to explain what happened in Indonesia during those times,” she said. “I must explain this to the best I can, in the historical context, because it is not a famous story like other parts of history at the same time. His position in an international context is what I am trying to do with this movie – it is a challenge but it represents a fun challenge. It is similar to to Someone made a movie in the future – you were not there to see what happened but use your imagination because you don’t want the movie to be limited. ”
“This city is a battlefield” is an adaptation of the 1952 Modchtar Lubis novel entitled “A Road WhO End” and focuses largely on the Kicco Jerikho teacher, who works for resistance, Hazil (Jerome Kurnia), sweet- the spoken rebel The assistant musician, and Vattema (Ariel Tatum), the wife of Issa and the meager of desire.
Tatom tells diverse That “a blessing in camouflage” the book did not describe its personality in great depth. “Mouly decided that we would develop these layers ourselves, and during the pre -production, we had talks on how to add more depths so that everything is logical regarding the love triangle in the movie.”
“We talked about her education, where she came from, how she met her husband, and what happened before his marital problem came to the surface,” the actor continues. “It was a very interesting part of this process because I had the honor to fill these voids to help the character to be more vibrant.”
From the court of courtesy IFFR
Before “this city is a battlefield”, Syria was its first experience in the American cinema industry with the movie “TRIFGR” from Netflix “Warning”. The director says that the presence of Indonesian cinematic outputs at the head of a major American wave was “no one heard”, and she now sees her in the studio system as “the second graduate degree.”
The director recalls: “The project came to me about 2019 and I was supposed to film the movie in 2020, but everyone knows what happened.” “We had already some funding that happens at that time for” this city is not a battlefield “but not enough to be able to deal with Covid measures, so we went to the joint production markets, and for this reason we have seven countries joint production. I went to the states The United in 2021 was a very complicated system there, and it is clear that I had ended for nearly two years, including after production. I finished VFX on the “trigger warning”, I was photographing the “battlefield”, so the two bleed each other a little. “
The Netherlands, through the IFFR’s Hubert Bals, is one of the countries of the joint production participating in “This city is a battlefield.” This depends on the continuous commitment of the festival to enhance Indonesian talents. The festival’s director, Fenja Caluderkic, told the festival diverse They were “deliberately working to create and implement a larger space inside the festival to show the richness of the national production of Indonesia.”
Last December, the Netherlands and Indonesia signed a prominent auditory production agreement in the opening market in Yogiakarta. The treaty recognizes qualified joint products as national products in both countries, opening access to subsidies, including support from the Netherlands Film Fund and a 35 % possible cash discount through the Netherland’s film production incentive.
“I feel that we are all aspiring to future cooperation between the Netherlands and Indonesia,” Syria adds. “Our country has a huge film making, but it focuses a lot on the local fans, which can be controlled given that we have 280 million people living in Indonesia, but I believe that global interest is necessary for the industry to grow.”
The director emphasized how it always aims to make films “festivals” and see the opportunity to travel internationally with her work as a means of “expanding creativity”. “I feel that this is what we miss at the present time, a way to expand our horizons and see films outside Hollywood or what is popular, to get more critical thinking about the cinema. There are now a lot of movie makers working in Indonesia but there is still a lot of growth.”
