Long road: A scene from Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts. (Courtesy of Cinesurya)

To receive critical acclaim at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival is every filmmaker’s dream and Mouly Surya is one of the few Indonesian directors to have received such recognition.

Fresh off the heels of the triumphant performance of her latest work — Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts — at the festival, Mouly hopes the film can become a testament of female empowerment in a patriarchic society.

Marlina earns the honor of being the only Southeast Asian feature-length film that was screened at Cannes Film Festival’s Cinefondation L’Atelier or Director’s Fortnight program, which aims to connect filmmakers with a wider network of international producers and distributors.

Marlina is the third Indonesian film to be featured at Cannes in its history.

Prior to the success of Marlina at Cannes, Mouly was known as the mind behind several acclaimed Indonesian films, most of which explore the complexities of human relationships explained to viewers as comfortably as her demeanor when she sits down for interviews.

Her previous film, 2013’s What They Don’t Talk About When They Talk About Love, also garnered a great response at international film festivals, such as the Sundance Film Festival in the United States, the Busan Film Festival in South Korea and the Tokyo International Film Festival in Japan.

So far, Marlina has only been shown at Cannes and Busan in 2016, but an Indonesian release is being planned for some time at the end of the year.

By just watching the trailer for Marlina, viewers will be drawn by both the emotional depths of its characters and its stunning use of sunlight with panoramic shots that emphasize the underrated beauty of one of Indonesia’s far-flung islands.

Despite the film’s stunning cinematography, which Mouly credits to her long-time cinematographer Yunus Pasolang, Mouly does not describe herself as a visual person by nature, but communicates her ideas visually through her input and conceptual buildup.

Even in her college years, she did not plan on making films as a career as she only had a slightly passing knowledge of films at the time.

“Originally, I had wanted to become a writer since I was a kid. I liked reading more than I did going to films. But I did watch a lot of films in my day, mostly laserdisc titles, because there wasn’t a lot of films that entered Indonesia anyway in the 1990s,” the director explained.

Her shift in interest came during her college experience in Melbourne, Australia, when she realized that even though she loved to write and aspired to become a writer, she never really found her own form.

It also helped that she found a community of friends who liked to dabble in film.

“I don’t write poetry or short stories, but when I tried to write films, I felt that I may have found what I was good at. I realized filmmaking was a form of writing, only visually!” she said.

Marlina itself is described by the acclaimed director as a neo-western tale of female survival, rather than revenge.

The film outlines the struggles of a widowed rural woman (played by Marsha Timothy in a role that was made specifically for her) who was robbed and had her home invaded by bandits, one of whom ultimately rapes her in front of her dead husband’s corpse.

A tale of typical Indonesian misogyny, the film is presented in four acts, based on Marlina’s acts of eventual and satisfying payback against the bandits, akin to the pacing of revenge auteur Quentin Tarantino’s protagonists.

The film mainly explores the necessity of female survival in a society where they are heavily looked down upon, and redemption through the cycle of life and death.

Within the story, Mouly aims to explore gender roles in extreme situations. In such times of desperation, what is a woman to do, especially within a society where the male is regarded as ultimately dominant?

“When we come to extreme situations, that’s when our primal human instincts turn on. In this film, we can see how a woman can use her supposed social role of belonging in the kitchen and how she can wage a resistance from the kitchen itself,” Mouly said.

The storyline behind Marlina was suggested by fellow filmmaker Garin Nugroho, based on tales coming from Sumba Island, East Nusa Tenggara.

When Mouly came to research the film in Sumba, the stories that she heard from the local women about their social survival became the basis for the film.

Celebrating female power, she explains, is central to the film’s aims, whether they be in rural areas or in big cities.

Women now have the equal right to education, and that is what is seen as vital for female empowerment.

“I’m not saying that female empowerment in Indonesia is rare, but the thing is, a lot of women aren’t able to see themselves as equal to men in this society. This is because society does not teach women to become leaders. They teach women to simply be women. The key to break that is to raise boys and girls the same way,” she said, adding that this unfair social placement has rooted away female confidence right from the beginning.

Coming from a family of six children, Mouly personally feels grateful that her confidence in success was encouraged by her parents, who raised both boys and girls with the same expectations and ambitions, thereby keeping her drive for life intact.

It is also how she plans to raise her daughter: to follow her dreams and become a strong woman in the future.

“When you educate one woman, you educate a generation, and the most affecting aspect of this is family,” she said.

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