Dieses Interview wurde auf Englisch geführt.
Barbara Wurm (BW): Thank you for joining the Berlinale Forum with your, as you just said, ‘little film’.
Joko Anwar (JA): It’s a big honor for us. Thank you so much.
BW: Is it really a little film for you? Why? For us, it's a big film.
JA: I guess because I always work with the same crew for years, it feels like a family. Every time it doesn't feel like making films, but like going on a vacation or something. Everybody knows everybody and how to communicate with each other, so everything was very smooth, and it doesn't feel like a big project.
BW: This time you decided to have your vacation in a prison.
JA: [laughs] I've been wanting to tell this story because I think that Indonesian citizens feel like we're living in a prison at the moment.
BW: Can you elaborate?
JA: Especially now, we truly cannot depend on the government. We’ve been having one chaotic moment after another. One of them is the disaster in Sumatra because of deforestation. We cannot depend on the government to make things right. We have to work together ourselves. It feels like we are working on autopilot with this government. And that's how prison is supposed to be, right? Whether you are friends or you are rival gangs, out there you cannot count on anyone in the authority to help you in any way.
BW: You have been wanting to make this film in prison?
JA: Yeah, I was interested in a place where people are forced to confront who they are when freedom is already gone. In that environment, goodness become an act of resistance or of survival rather than virtue. So it's a very honest place.
Lisabona Rahman (LR): You work a lot with confined spaces, where people are robbed of their liberty. Tell us more about this.
JA: I wanted the supernatural horror element to feel inevitable rather than spectacular and to work on characters intimately rather than to make set pieces. If you are working in a more controlled form, there is more space for the audience to reflect rather than to react. I want people to reflect. This is easier to achieve in a confined space, if that makes sense.
LR: Yes, but confinement also brings a sense of panic, claustrophobia, fear. You have explored these emotions a lot, especially in your recent works. Can you tell us more about this?
JA: In a confined space with strict rules, people will be forced to come up with their true selves. It's not a place to put on a facade. You need everything you know and do all you can to survive. You also have to be honest. By telling this story, I'll have more honest characters rather than a cosmetic set of cast. Most of my films are like that. Even my first film, JONI’S PROMISE (JANJI JONI, 2005), talks about the dynamics of Jakarta as a city and the characters who are confined within their own safe place.
In a confined space with strict rules, people will be forced to come up with their true selves.
LR: That space is the cinema, where the film takes place.
JA: Yes.
BW: That’s the starting point of all filmmakers. They start in the cinema and they end up in prison. Oh my God. No!
JA: It used to be like that. Now YouTube is the starting point and you also end up in prison.
BW: Jesus! Can I ask you at what point did the ghost, or the enlightened supernatural visionary, come into the plot?
JA: It's very specifically Indonesian… We can easily find a person who says: I can see ghosts, I can see people's aura, I can tell your future just by reading your hands or your face. We are a very superstitious nation, and I want to bring up how we view everyday life in that perspective. I believe it will resonate globally.
LR: Why put superstition, religion, and art together?
JA: Well, I think our people become very superstitious because we are very religious. You are told to believe in something that is not seen and to have faith. Even people who are supposed to govern us with logic use superstitious beliefs and religion as weapons to make anyone who is below them do what they want. I believe that art is supposed to open people's mind. It's not the Internet, which makes you become close-minded, and you'll try to find things to justify it. We have so many malls, but yet we have only one art center in every city, or nothing at all. I think that's missing in Indonesia. This film is supposed to be a satire on how far apart we are from art.
BW: It’s a tough entry into the world of art starting from dead body sculptures. Was it an artist or your mind that created those beautiful works?
JA: I worked with five illustrators to create what we call the ghost’s ‘macabre art’. We discussed the form for each murder scene, starting from the shower head and the human stove, ending with the lady of justice. All of them represent not just the people in the film, but the people in our society.
LR: Do you also relate this fantasy to the tradition of horror films?
JA: I think the ghost here is different from other horror films because it feels purposeful rather than chaotic. It is not interested in terror. It arrives with intent. It seeks proximity to the injustice protected by the system, represented by the prison. Violence in there is collateral. It reveals how many layers of moral decay exist before the ghost can reach its true target: the rich man in the prison.
The ghost here is different from other horror films because it feels purposeful rather than chaotic. It is not interested in terror.
My story is based on a real prison called Sukamiskin in West Java. It's very ironic because ‘Sukamiskin’ means ‘love to be poor’. There are a lot of rich people put into that prison and living a lavish life there. I need to explain that in Indonesia, these luxurious cells for inmates with corruption cases actually exist. High-ranking officials or rich people live with the internet, computers, they can watch movies, and they can leave the prison anytime they want.
BW: I want us to come back to a genre that influenced you, the Kung Fu. What is your interest in directing the Kung Fu scenes?
JA: I grew up in Kung Fu films, and my childhood was actually like in CINEMA PARADISO [1988]. I actually went up to the projectionist room to peek through the projection hole and see the screen. Indonesian cinema is people's cinema. It was very rare for cinemas back then, especially in a small city like mine, to show serious films. They only show films that people love, and most of them are Kung Fu. I have always wanted to do Kung fu films. The Kung Fu fighting scenes in this film are very functional. The one-on-one fighting is not power struggle, but rather to show the foolishness of citizens fighting each other without any real purpose. There will be no winner. The brawl scene is not only a spectacle, but to show that the fighting within this prison is just not useful at all. At the end, the corrupt system will win and they will have more opportunities to rule us if we do not work together.
LR: Joko, horror has always been loved, but also ridiculed in cinema. You and I experienced a period where horror film was in its golden age in the 1980s in Indonesia, and then it really took a dunk. Your generation picked it up again and maybe I can say it's the second golden age of horror. How are your horror movies today different from the ones in the '80s?
JA: I think horror films in the '80s in Indonesia relied more on jump scares, spectacles, and set pieces. But I believe that a horror movie will not be scary at all if you don't care for the characters. This is what's different in my generation. We make the characters so people can relate to their struggle and care about their safety. In many films back then, problems could be easily solved by citing the Quran and all the ghosts would disappear. But not now. In my films, all the religious leaders will be murdered. So it's us saying, as filmmakers, don't trust those religious leaders because they're also humans. Some of them are not good people, don't rely on them, rely on yourself.
LR: You brought atheism or agnosticism to the film. This is something that is very rare to see in Indonesian films. Some people went to prison after they claimed they were atheists on Facebook, for example.
JA: I faced those difficulties too. I mean, every time I make a horror movie where an Ustad [honorific title] or an Islamic leader dies, killed by a ghost, there'll be protests, sometimes big protests. But I keep saying that it means you have to pray harder. Even the religious leader who pray five times a day can be killed by a ghost, so you have to pray harder. And they believe that.
LR: I watched this film with a slightly nostalgic feeling with regard to the cast in your previous films. It feels, on the one hand, like a reunion, because some actors have grown older. But on the other hand, there are also a lot of fresh combinations here, especially with Southeast Asian actors Bront Palarae and Ho Yuhang.
JA: Yes. From the very beginning, we were very well aware that this movie could only work if we have fantastic actors. I treated it like a stage play. There are only 30 something scenes in the film, and one scene can run for 15 minutes. From the very beginning, I told my crew and my cast that we will only do one take for every shot. There can be no mistakes.
I told my crew and cast that we will only do one take for every shot. There can be no mistakes.
BW: Wow. And you did?
JA: Yes, we did. Most of the time we had one take. We would often wrap shooting days before lunch. In rehearsals I said, ‘when the camera rolls, treat it like you are on stage’. Everybody was preparing themselves. There was no competition, but everybody wanted to give their best. Seventy percent of them are veteran actors, thirty percent are actually new, but all of them have the same energy. I have a habit of making a character sheet for each character, from the day they were born until they arrive in the story. For all 40 characters. Let me show you, this is Anggoro, the main character. I wrote his life, the milestones, and what family he was born into, the environment, the school. I even wrote a letter to his mom while he is in prison. It's not in the film, but it helps them to really know their characters. I also act in other people’s films just to know how it feels to be directed. During the pre-production, we don't really read scripts, but work on the characters. I'll be conducting interviews for scenes that are not in the in the script to help them really understand their characters. When actors get into the film, I just let them live. The cameras, the art and everything technical in the film have to serve the characters. The character should not be restrained, the performance should be free.
LR: Wow, that really sounds like an in-production actors’ studio.
JA: It helps because then the shooting will be very fast. They’ll always know how to respond. Sometimes I will not say ‘cut’, I keep the camera rolling and bring in a character that is saying or doing something while all other characters have to react. Because they know who they are, they can give proper reactions. Magic happens not in the technicalities of movie making, but when the actors really think they are the characters and they can do whatever they want.
Magic happens not in the technicalities of movie making, but when the actors really think they are the characters and they can do whatever they want.
BW: Amazing. But with 40 actors, to have individual understanding, act as an ensemble, and then relate them to the function that they have, that must have been a huge challenge, right?
LR: Yeah, and it's so funny that you call it a small film because by definition for us in Forum, a small film has one character or sometimes two [laughs].
JA: The movie was only shot in 22 half-days. So it's more like 11 days. Big films mean like 50 or 60 shooting days.
BW: How long did the preparation for this plot and the character structure take?
JA: The usual 10 weeks, and this is the biggest ensemble I have ever worked with.
BW: I see two challenges. First, the choreography of dancing and fighting. It's so amazing. Maybe you can describe how these scenes are prepared and shot. And then the plot, how to put together the characters in a way that makes sense in a very swiftly edited film.
JA: During the preparation, I have a habit of doing a video board with my cell phone. All my crew have to memorize all lines in the script. I will call them and say, ‘be this character’. When the crew has memorized the script and understood the story and the characters, they will want to put their best into it. So I do this video board for the crew to understand where to put the camera and also the catering tent. Then once the actors are on set, they are free to improvise or do ad libs. You can say it's really well-planned, but it also has to be liberating at the same time.
LR: That sounds like really a lot of work, both technical and intellectual. I noticed that you also have the editing credit.
JA: Yeah. I edit my own films. This one took four days, as usual.
BW: You will be invited to German film schools immediately.
LR: Exactly. One-take shootings, four-day editings.
JA: That’s the thing. Editing is very short because I had no other shots and just have to assemble.
LR: And how many cameras are in each take?
JA: Only one, usually. Only for special occasion, but that's very rare, two. I prefer one camera because then everything goes through one vision. Only during the one-on-one fighting we shoot with two cameras. I usually also operate the second camera.
BW: It is a very Indonesian film, so related to its society and politics. At the same time, you edit and put it all together in a way that we can follow. You are on the map of the world genre cinema, maybe even in the center. Is that something that is on your mind when you're shooting and editing, how everything will be translatable to a wider audience?
JA: Yes. Not in the sense that I try to second-guess the audience, but I try to make everything well explained. All information has to be there and it cannot be repeated. I also make sure that everything that's culturally specific can be understood by people from other countries. Maybe a character asks someone to explain it in a simpler way, or by having scene dynamics and characters that are accessible for a wider audience.
BW: In the film, the angriest person becomes the target of political or societal anger. This may be true not only for Indonesian politics, but also globally. What made you put this in the center?
JA: It’s very ironic. These corrupt government people are happy, they're not angry. We, citizens who live in poor conditions, are angry. At times we become the target because we are angry. In this story, many inmates begin doing good deeds out of fear because they understand that the ghost kills people who are angry or people with the worst energy. Is that morality? Doing good deeds out of fear? That's the central point of the film. If goodness is motivated by survival, is it still meaningful? I am less interested in redemption. I think systems built on division benefit from isolation. This prison mirrors a larger social structure where people are encouraged to compete with one another. We Indonesians do it every day. We wake up at five o'clock in the morning and we try to get into that train to our workplace, just elbowing everybody else. The government doesn't want us to be united, and when we do something good they accuse us of taking advantage. We don't trust people who are doing good things anymore. It's crazy. Unity becomes radical, precisely because it is discouraged, and we have come together. You can call me naive, but that is what I believe in.
Unity becomes radical, precisely because it is discouraged, and we have to come together.
BW: In Indonesia, will this film be received as a sharp critique or more like a fun thing?
JA: I don't want to make this movie smaller by saying it's a political statement because that will work against the real purpose of the film as an art form to open up people's horizon. But yeah, I think it's very important to raise awareness about these things. It has to be practiced collectively, or we will collapse as a society.
LR: Why did you bring up the ghosts as doppelgängers?
JA: I want the ghost to show the bad side of people. By having this doppelgänger, which is the worst form of oneself, I want to ask: do you really need a ghost to show how bad you are doing?
BW: So it is the fun part?
JA: You cannot be serious all the time. Even if you are saying something serious, you have to have room to play. To have fun, not at the cost of the issue, but to ask people: ‘Hey, we are in a prison together. Let's make this prison feel better by having fun’. The film does not refer to a single government but it observes how power protects itself inside institutions that are supposed to deliver justice. This dynamic is not uniquely Indonesian. It's global and structural and cannot be changed in one go, but we have to do something about it.
LR: How did you work with music in the film?
JA: We have original scores done by my usual collaborator, composer Aghi Narottama. From the very beginning, we didn’t want the score to sound big and operatic. My biggest brief to Aghi was, let's make a very cruel music score. It's punishing, but within that, there are always people trying to show hope.
LR: Did you create your own songs?
JA: We really wanted to buy a song, but it would have cost us the entire marketing budget. So we said, ‘No, let's make our own songs’. I wrote all the lyrics and my friend Tony [Merle], who was also in the first 10 minutes of the film, is the songwriter and composer.
BW: I think this is a perfect ending for a talk about a big independent genre film. It’s amazing.
JA: Thank you.
