Kapanlagi.com/Muhammad RasyadHe is a familiar face to Indonesian television audiences and moviegoers. Now, the 24-year-old is on the way to becoming an internationally respected actor.

This year marks Arifin Putra’s 11th year in the entertainment business. Born in Meinz, Germany, to a German father and Indonesian mother on May 1, 1987, Arifin started his career as a background actor in TV commercials, like so many other actors before him.

 It was all unplanned, he says, with his acting career coming about after he accompanied his sister, who wanted to pursue her dream of being a model, to a talent agency that then offered him a role as an extra.

“I thought ‘why not?’. Then I decided to go for it.”

In his first job in show business, he worked between 15 and 18 hours and received a Rp 250,000 (US$27) paycheck.

Having entered the industry, the actor, whose full name is Putra Arifin Scheunemann, found a genuine love of acting when he took a drama class at the Sakti Acting Studio, organized by prominent acting coach Eka Sitorus in 2004.

Four years later, he agreed to star in the teen flick Lost in Love, a sequel to romantic comedy Eiffel I’m in Love, which was shot in Paris. The role, in which he played a Thai student studying in France, required him to speak Indonesian, English and French.

“I thought, for my international portfolio, it’s not bad. If you can show that you’ve worked in foreign country and with foreign crew and you can speak three languages, it’s not a bad start,” he said of his ability to speak English, French and German.

That role led him to a more challenging part in psychological thriller Rumah Dara (Macabre), directed by noted filmmakers Timo Tjahjanto and Kimo Stamboel, which featured at several overseas film festivals.

“I learned something from the flick: if a movie is made well and seriously, people, including the international audience, will appreciate it,” he says.

This lesson stayed with him and he began to bulk up his portfolio in order to make it at an international level.

“I don’t think about Hollywood. Filming can be in any countries like Thailand,
Hong Kong France or Germany. I want to be a world actor who can be in movies in any country,” he said.

After a number of movies, Arifin landed a leading role in Badai di Ujung Negeri (Storm in the Edge of the Nation), with young filmmaker Agung Sentausa, director of 2006 film Garasi, at the helm.

 In the film, Arifin plays Badai, a military officer assigned to the South China Sea bordering Malaysia and Singapore, where he meets local woman Anisa (played by Astrid Tiar) and encounters his old pal Joko (Yama Carlos).

Things start to go awry when bodies are found floating in the sea, including that of the son of Badai’s friend.

In the movie, which is a blend of drama and action, Arifin also brushes shoulders with film stalwarts like Ida Leman and Jojon.

Earlier this year, Arifin appeared in Batas, directed by Rudi Sudjarwo and written by Slamet Rahardjo Djarot,
which followed a similar theme involving a conflict along the Indonesian border with Malaysia in Borneo.

Arifin cites differences between the two films, noting that Badai tells the story from the perspective of the navy officer and displays more action, while the plot of Batas is seen through the eyes of local people and is more of a social drama.

He admits that Badai was more challenging. First and foremost, he had to be physically fit and developed larger muscles.

 “I have to look good because I’m the leading man here. So if other people work hard to make their bodies better, I have to work twice as hard,” he explained.

“Plus, I had to master sepak takraw
and learned to speak Indonesian with a Malay accent. This is a very complicated character that has some troubles. It’s
pretty tough.”

Before the filming kicked off, Arifin and some fellow actors went through a special boot camp where they were trained as if they were in the military.

Their training sessions included marching, physical exercise, weapons training, swimming, conducting practice raids on a building and going on a sea patrol.

“We stayed with real military cadets for eight days. We usually woke up at dawn, followed by a 4 km or 5 km running session, and then did some push-ups and pull-ups,” Arifin enthusiastically recounted.

“We were handled by competent people who took their job seriously. One of our instructors once swam across Sunda Strait, from Merak port in Cilegon, Banten, to Sumatra’s Lampung, for 33 hours.”

He also learned to jump out of a quickly moving speedboat and dive into the sea without any diving gear.

 “I did 99 percent of the stunts, except for one take where I had to escape from an explosive house and jump across a river.”

Arifin discovered another side to military officers during filming. Through this movie, he wanted to restore the reputation of the troops.

“There has been a stigma with military forces. Through this film, we aim at showing people that military personnel are also human.”

Arifin cites some obstacles faced by those in the military, including the inability to contact their relatives while they are on the road and the need for high-tech devices and vehicles.

But in the meantime, to accomplish his long-term goal of going internationally, Arifin is saving his money so he can enroll in an intensive one-month acting workshop in Los Angeles.

After graduation, he says, participants will attend a ball with agents, casting directors and others in the business in the hope of getting more opportunities in the movie industry.

Arifin also revealed his ambition to become a producer.

“In the future, besides being an actor, I would focus on producing films. I’m more into business things, such as looking for business partners, looking for funding and how to market a movie,” he said, adding that he was currently working on a short-film.

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