Promised Paradise

The Jakarta-based Indonesian puppeteer and troubadour Agus Nur Amal travels to Bali to call to account the people who were responsible for the bomb attack on a nightclub there on 12 October 2002. Like in his theatre shows, humour is his main weapon. Before an audience of children, we see him enact the attack on the Word Trade Center inside a gigantic ‘TV set’. The doll of Osama Bin Laden swaying his hips gets his audience roaring with laughter. But people stop laughing when his shadow play about the WTC disaster changes into images of new bomb attacks in Indonesia - first on the Australian Embassy in September 2004, and later in Bali in October 2005. Director Leonard Retel Helmrich, the 2004 winner of the Joris Ivens Award with Shape of the Moon (AFF05), uses ingenious editing to have Agus talk with the brain behind the attack in a ‘TV interview’. Agus also consults a paranormal advisor and asks him where the perpetrators of the suicide attack are now. ‘Their heaven is our hell’, is the conclusion. But while Agus is in Bali, his friend Endang, who is still in Jakarta, falls prey to intolerance and violence.

Leonard Retel Helmrich is a Guest of the Festival