Negotiation:  In Prenjak, Diah (played by Rosa Winenggar) offers a single matchstick for Rp 10,000 (less than US$1) to Jarwo (Yohanes Budyambara) during her lunch break at work. In the deal, Jarwo gets the opportunity to take a peek at Diah’s genitals by lighting the match in a dark place. (Courtesy of Studio Batu)

Director Wregas Bhanutedja and his team had little to no expectation at all when the panel at the recent Cannes Film Festival was preparing the announcement of the winner of the Leica Cine Discovery Prize.

The Leica Cine Discovery Prize goes to the best short film at the Cannes film festival, and Wregas’ Prenjak/In The Year Of The Monkey was one of the finalists.

For Wregas and his team, the fact that Prenjak was chosen as one of the finalists was more than enough. They had shot their short movie with so many limitations. The lack of funds forced them to borrow cameras from the father of one of the cast members, utilize natural light because they could not afford a proper movie light set and use Wregas’ high school friends as actors.

They submitted Prenjak to the Cannes Film Festival just two days before the submission deadline.

Wregas personally believed at that time that the winner would be a short film from Greece, which left him and his team in awe due to its professional cinematography. When the announcement was about to be made, Wregas literally had no clue at all that he and his team were about to make history in the Indonesian film industry.

When the announcer finally named Prenjak as the winning submission, Wregas and his team were both in jubilation and disbelief. They needed a brief moment to clear their heads and understand what had just happened.

Teamwork: Director and scriptwriter of Prenjak/In the Year of the Monkey Wregas Bhanuteja (second right) poses with his film teammates Ersya Ruswandono (center), Rosa Winenggar (second left), Yohanes Budyambara (right) and Henricus Pria (left) during a press conference in Jakarta on Friday. (JP/Jerry Adiguna)

Wregas became the first Indonesian filmmaker to win one of the main prizes at Cannes, and the fact that he won it for the short film category lets him stand shoulder to shoulder with some of the greatest filmmakers, like Wong Kar Wai and Bernardo Bertolucci.

“I had not prepared any speech at all. When I walked up to the stage to give my speech, I took a very deep and long breath to calm myself down. After a while, I was finally able to deliver my speech,” Wregas said.

After his victory, the jury members at Cannes told him that they had fallen in love with Prenjak as soon as they had finished watching it.

“The jurors told me that when they had finished watching it, they reached a unanimous decision that this film was the winner,” Wregas said.

Prenjak tells the story of the widow Diah, who is desperate for cash. To make some money, she decides to sell a man named Jarwo matchsticks for Rp 10,000 a piece (less than US$1), which he could use to take a peek at her genitals by lighting them up in a dark place.

In just 13 minutes, Wregas manages to deliver excellent metaphors and criticism of patriarchy and gender inequality without being preachy or falling into clichés. The most profound impact of Prenjak is that it makes the audience burst into laughter before releasing viewers with a sense of sadness at the very end.

At only 23 years of age, Wregas displays a lot of maturity as a director. This is hardly surprising, considering that he decided to take on a filmmaking career at the age of just 14.

“There was a filmmaking project at my school. I was actually one of the actors, but I ended up being involved in much of the directing process. That is when I realized I wanted to become a filmmaker,” he said.

Wregas’ career choice did not go down well with his parents, who wanted him to major in industrial engineering at university instead of going to the Jakarta Arts Institute (IKJ) to learn filmmaking.

However, after Wregas managed to prove himself by making short movies accepted at international festivals, his parents became more supportive. They still, however, had doubts about Wregas’ choice of doing art house cinema works instead of producing mainstream films.

“My mom often asked ‘where is the money in art cinema?’ but I told her that I could look for money elsewhere from other businesses. Film is not the only way of making a living. For me, film is a channel for my inner thoughts and feelings, and I will support myself economically by other means,” he said.

After Cannes, Wregas has set his sights on a new target: “It is now time for me to produce my first long feature film,” he said.

“I have no ambition of winning an award like an Oscar, for example. For me, the greatest prize is when people from the audience come to me after watching my film and tell me that it touches them.”

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