The Silent Path

Journalist and documentarian Yonri Soesanto Revolt (Mayday! May day! Mayday!, IFFR 2023) returns to IFFR with The Silent Path, an unassuming, composite portrait of Father Bert Hagendoorn, a Dutch missionary who worked for fifty years in the autonomous Indonesian province of Papua. Given the name Soebertono Mote by his hosts, Hagendoorn was involved in several community-oriented projects in the region, at times against the wishes of his diocese, such as when he campaigned for the use of contraceptives to combat the AIDS epidemic.

Combining Hagendoorn’s diary entries with interviews and archival material, The Silent Path presents the priest not just as a clerical authority, presiding over burials and baptisms, but as an ordinary man in modest surroundings, unalterably open to the world around him. Whether lying injured on a hospital bed or enjoying meals with friends, he seems to possess an indefatigable spirit and sense of humour.

Though bookended by a eulogy delivered at Hagendoorn’s funeral, the film is far from a hagiography. The Silent Path registers, instead, as a hushed remembrance of a passionate Dutchman who made Papua his home, a personal tribute by the filmmaker to a figure who inspired him as he did many others.

– Srikanth Srinivasan