Retno Ratih Damayanti

Nyai: A Woman from Java

Set in Indonesia's Dutch colonial era, in 1927, a young and beautiful woman lives with her sick and aged Dutch husband. This woman loses her own name and is called Njai, which means a foreigner's concubine, and realizes that she is living in a kind of prison, while she deals with loads of visitors to her residence. Director Garin Nugroho shows in a distinctive way how much effort a woman, deserted both by the colonial country's law and the colonized country's traditional culture, puts in to retain her dignity.