The Mirror Never Lies Trailer (2011)

Kamila Andini (she's the daughter of Indonesia's leading filmmaker Garin Nugroho) got to know the seafaring Bajo tribe when she went diving in the Wakatobi archipelago. Her engrossing debut feature draws on her knowledge of the region (above and below the waves), her encounters with local people (some of whom ended up acting in the film) and Bajo folklore (the belief that a ritual mirror can show a missing person who will return from the sea). Her story centres on Pakis, a 12-year-old girl whose father is lost at sea, and her difficult relationship with her mother Tayung, who keeps her face permanently masked in white lotion. Pakis has a friend and confidant in her young neighbour Lumo, and she comes to consider Tudo, a researcher from Jakarta, as a kind of surrogate father. Working with the great cinematographer Rachmad Syaiful (he shot the Joko Anwar movies we've screened in VIFF), Andini does without melodrama and smartly concentrates on the day-to-day life of characters. Along the way she illuminates the region's ecology and effectively argues that the Bajo way of life should be a model for Indonesia as a whole. And her film is stunningly beautiful.