Ravi Bharwani (director), Shanty Harmayn and Orlow Seunke (producers) and Rayya Makarim (scriptwriter) from Indonesia

One of the winners of the three prizes in the Open Doors section at the Locarno International Film Festival this year was the Indonesian project “Jermal” by Ravi Bharwani as the director and Shanty Harmayn and Orlow Seunke as the producers. “Jermal” tells the story about the 12 year old boy Jaya, who – after his mother´s death - is sent to his father to a remote fishing platform in the middle of the sea in Indonesia. The father cannot accept Jaya as his child, but has to accept the fact that his son is working on the platform, as there is no other alternative way for Jaya to live. The struggle of each person in life to get the attention from the others and the process of accepting others and being accepted by others is the crucial point of “Jermal”. In the eye of Ravi Bharwani, this topic is a major issue in Indonesian society whit its ethnical conflicts. Ravi Bharwani directed and produced his first feature “The Rainmaker” in 2004, a surrealistic and myth-driven tale, which won several awards and was screened at festivals like Rotterdam, Shanghai, Barcelona and Busan. “One important element in my movie is the feeling”, says Bharwari, who graduated from the Jakarta Institute of the Arts.

“Jermal is a story of alienation and isolation, but also about survival”, says scriptwriter Rayya Makrim, who returned to Indonesia after a sholarship stay in the UK to continue her work as a scriptwriter. “We in Indonesia have to raise the level of scriptwriting to a more conceptual level of scripts and story-telling. One of the problems in Indonesia is that people do write but do not know how to write.”

“Our focus here in Indonesia is on the educational work”, adds Orlow Seunke, Director of the Jakarta International Film Festival, who is also a teacher at the Film Academy in Jakarta. Orlow Seunke is a renown producer and directed award-winning films like “Taste of water” (Venice Golden Lion, 1982) and “Pervola” (Venice, 1985), animations and TV films. He aims to increase the audience attending the Jakarta Film Festival since he started as a director in 2004.

Together with Shanty Harmayn , one of the founders of the JIFF in 1999, he produces “Jermal”. Shanty Harmayn is actively involved in the film production with her companies In-Docs (launched 2002) and Salto Films. In 2005 she became the Chairperson of YMMFI (Foundation of Indonesian Independent Film). The film industry in Indonesia is still small. “There is no governmental funding for films”, says Shanty Harmayn, “but this keeps us vital and independent.”

“Jermal” was awarded with a grant of 40,000 Euro for development and production from the Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). The decision was made by the Festival in conjunction with the support of the Swiss fund Visions Sud Est.

VY 2006