CM 2023

Private investment

108 Days

CineMart 2023 - 108 Days

Goals at CineMartCineMart will provide much-needed exposure for this film, which will open doors to international co-producers, funders (film grants), and worldwide sales agents. SynopsisA scandal has ruined the credibility and rocks the expatriate community in a posh international primary school in Jakarta.&nbsp;Dinah Janssen (30), an Indonesian mother to her Indonesian-Dutch son Alexander (7), accuses an openly gay French-Canadian teacher, Claude Bateman (32), of sexually molesting her son in the school grounds. A school official agrees to look into the case but asks Ms. Dinah to keep things quiet. She alerts the media and sues the school for a whopping $125 million. The police, promised a large cut from the lawsuit by Ms. Janssen&rsquo;s lawyers, detains Mr. Bateman even though they cannot find any evidence against him. This scandal causes national outrage, where homophobic and racist sentiments, faux-nationalism, and anti-foreigner rhetoric flourish into a maddening hysteria. The school is perceived as ruining Indonesian children with their overtly liberal and western ideas, and the government threatens to close the school permanently. Religious leaders see this as a great opportunity to push their far-right agendas. The media eventually joins the circus, and Indonesians love this mixture of gay paedophilia and anti-western formula.&nbsp;The only person believing in Mr. Bateman's innocence is Marni (45), a conservative cop. Through the investigation of this case, Marni, who is also a mother, is determined to get justice for Alex. Marni has to face a variety of things that are foreign to her: an exclusive school institution that is far from reality; the accused who is an expatriate, Dina (Alex's mother), who is strong-willed but hard to handle, and the pressure from the public and the media. Marni has to navigate the twists and turns of an increasingly unusual case. The film chronicles 108 days of Bateman's detainment and ends just as he begins the trial.&nbsp;Director's BiographyLucky Kuswandi (1980) is one of Indonesia&rsquo;s most exciting young directors. The Wall Street Journal praises his work as &ldquo;original and uncharted.&rdquo; His career started in 2006 when he was invited to the Berlinale Talent Campus in Berlin, Germany.In 2008 he directed a documentary short Miss or Mrs?&nbsp;as part of the anthology "At Stake" that screened at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009.In 2014, his film premiered titled Selamat Pagi Malam / In the Absence of the Sun. The Straits Times praised the film, calling it &ldquo;dripping with social commentary, the feature illustrates the contradictions that make up the rich mosaic that is one of Asia&rsquo;s most populous cities&rdquo;. In 2015, Kuswandi&rsquo;s latest short film, The Fox Exploits the Tiger's Might, competed at the Cannes Film Festival (Semaine de la Critique). The film became the second Indonesian film ever screened in this section, and the first in 26 years. The film won Best Short Film &amp; Best Director at the Silver Screen Awards in Singapore in 2015. It also won Lucky his first Piala Citra Award for Best Short Film.&nbsp;His film Ali &amp; Ratu Ratu Queens won two Citra Awards in 2021. He is also currently finishing his other Netflix Original film, which is scheduled to be released in late 2022.

Palari Films

A mother accuses an expatriate teacher of sexually abusing her son at an international elementary school in Jakarta. The teacher is detained for 108 days pending trial. In a maelstrom of fabricated hysteria, both the public and law enforcement make snap judgements.