Shalahuddin Siregar

A Boarding School

"Pesantren" offers rare access inside an Islamic boarding school, and an insight into a traditional educational system that fosters good character-building based on a peaceful religious teaching that has been practiced in Indonesia for centuries. Raising their students to respect and to have compassion towards others despite their differences, these schools are Indonesia's last defense in the face of today's rising extremism.

Song for My Children

An elderly choir group brings back erased violent history by singing songs that were written in prison and have been silenced for more than 50 years.

Nokas

Nokas, a 27 years old man has a simple dream that is to marry his beloved Ci, a Timorese girl who works in a slaughterhouse in Sumili, Kupang. It is not easy to marry a Timorese girl who due to the belis or dowry a man has to pay. The amount varies but it is never a bargain. Sometimes such tradition makes marriage sound like a business transaction which the women become merely an object. In addition Nokas has to get another fund ready for two wedding ceremonies in two locations. Hailing from a poor family Nokas has to make a strategy in funding the costly wedding ceremonies many problems emerge from such big issue like the dowry he has to pay to the parents to the issue of wedding dress. With observational approach this movie is depicting the efforts of Nokas’s family in fulfilling his wedding expenses.

The Land Beneath the Fog

In the rhythm of a slow visual journey, "The Land Beneath the Fog" takes an intimate look on family relations in Genikan, a village on the slope of Merbabu Mountain. A quiet community faces change without understanding why it happens. As a community of farmers who rely on traditional Javanese calendar system to read the seasons, they become puzzled by the dramatic change of seasons. Describing a life on the brink of vanishing, this documentary offers deep insights into an invisible and disenfranchised society which is struggling hard underneath its veiled existence.