At a time of surging intolerance, the six-day Tolerance Film Festival highlights movies that raise hope for improved social attitudes and greater tolerance in Indonesia.

“The films I want to show at the festival are particularly ones that provide inspiration through tolerance and diversity,” said the festival’s initiator, Monique Rijkers.

“The films screened are also curated to reflect on Indonesia’s most problematic issues of tolerance, which are clans and race.”

As examples of a surge in intolerant attitudes in Indonesia, she referred to mass protests by Islamic hardliners and the persecution of members of the LGBT community, to the imprisonment of former Jakarta governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, which was in part racially motivated by his opponents.

The festival, which runs until Sunday at @america at Pacific Place mall in Central Jakarta, was planned around World Tolerance Day, which fell on Nov. 16.

For that occasion, the film that was screened was the Pakistani documentary Song of Lahore, which follows a group of Pakistani musicians persecuted by Taliban influences at home through their quest to play music, and who ultimately team up with jazz musicians from the United States in a splendid blend of sounds and
culture.

Film that particularly captured viewers’ interest was Palestinian director Sameh Zoabi’s 2013 documentary Under The Same Sun, which depicts the collaborative efforts of two businessmen, one Israeli and one Palestinian, in developing solar energy for their war-torn land.

The former journalist describes this film as the definitive spirit and message that her festival conveys, saying that “even two people who come from different, conflicting backgrounds are able to band together to create a better fate for their land.” Unfortunately, the film will not be screening at the festival, because of distribution issues.

The lineup at this year’s festival includes a notable number of Middle Eastern-themed films, which is hardly surprising, given that this part of the world is home to the most contentious racial, tribal and political conflicts in the world, and that Middle Eastern themes can sometimes be more relevant to an Indonesian.

The featured titles include a slightly uplifting 2012 production called Make Hummus Not War, a documentary about the fate of Jews in Morocco, They Promised Us The Sea and Salam Neighbour, which offers a look into the world’s second-largest refugee camp, located on the border between Jordan and Syria.  

A particular gem screened at the festival is a short film about the Holocaust and the role of an Indonesian family in saving a Jew in Europe.

Nina Bobo Untuk Bobby (Lullaby for Bobby) is a 30-minute animated work produced by Monique herself about a Jewish baby sheltered and hidden by an Indonesian family in the Netherlands during the onset of the
Holocaust.

It tells the story of the now-75-year-old Alfred Munzer, most of whose family perished in the Holocaust during his early life in the Netherlands under Nazi rule, and the Indonesian family that risked their lives to hide and shelter Munzer.

“I would say it’s an extraordinary film, because the story itself is one that can inspire the spirit of tolerance in Indonesia as well as in other places,” Monique says.

While the festival will only be held in Jakarta this year, Monique expressed her amazement about the enthusiasm of other cities, wishing the festival would come to them.

Due to the lack of funds, requests from cities as small as Kebumen in Central Java or Cirebon in West Java could not be honored, but that does not undermine the fact that tolerance is very much sought after by a society that is getting tired of all the surface-level division and politics.

“What I hope for in the future is that there will be no more Tolerance Film Festivals in maybe three years’ time, because by that time, I hope, tolerance is something that is so common that it doesn’t need to be highlighted. But alas, it seems that this will not be the case, if you look at the social situation in Indonesia.”

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