‘Jamila dan Sang Presiden’ ready for Oscar

(JP/Arief Suhardiman)

JAKARTA: Filmmaker and activist Ratna Sarumpaet is both excited and nervous after the Indonesian Filmmakers and Televisions Association chose her movie, Jamila dan Sang Presiden (Jamila and the President), to represent the country in the Academy Awards.

According to Ratna, the movie has been selected to represent Indonesia in the Foreign Language category, competing for the Oscar with movies from 64 other countries.

“The issue of child trafficking in Jamila dan Sang Presiden is more of a local issue, but poverty [also portrayed in the movie] is a subject other countries can relate too,” says the 50 year old. “It has to do with global politics, and [more precisely] with the free-market model,” she adds.

Ratna hopes the world will enjoy watching Jamila not only for its technical and artistic qualities, but also for the moral values embedded in it.

“It’s about how awful the effect of poverty on human’s morality and lives is,” says Ratna of Jamila, which will also be competing for the first time next month with five other movies in the Asiatica Filmmediale Festival in Rome, Italy.

“[Winning the Oscar] is surely going to be hard,” she says. “But if the movie can win in Rome’s film festival, who knows? It might in some way help the movie win the Oscar,” she laughs.

Jamila, screened at a number international film festivals in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Australia, highlights the issues of poverty and underage sex trafficking in Indonesia. — JP