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Indonesia / 2025 / 117 min
Director：Mouly SURYA

Jakarta, 1946, under Dutch colonial rule. Isa, a violin teacher involved in the resistance movement, is ordered to carry out the assassination of a Dutch official. Meanwhile, Hazil—his comrade and collaborator—is having an affair with Isa’s wife, Fatimah.

Jakarta, Indonesia, 1946. After Japan’s surrender to the Allied forces in 1945, Indonesia was placed back under Dutch control and found itself in the midst of a war for independence. Isa, a former soldier and resistance fighter, is tasked with the assassination of a Dutch official alongside Hazil, his violin student and fellow resistance member. But while Isa is a capable fighter in the resistance, as a husband he is vulnerable and struggles with feelings of inadequacy rooted in past trauma. His wife, Fatimah, caught between the courage to take up arms and her desires as a wife, has fallen into an affair with Hazil. This story of intersecting public duty and private desire is rendered with weight and gravity by Mouly Surya through somber tones and richly shadowed lighting. It is an ambitious work that draws on the cinematic grammars of historical epic, melodrama, and action to depict the resistance of those who, even amid the chaos of history, strive to preserve their personal dignity. The film had its world premiere as the closing film at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Director’s statement

Indonesia’s claim to independence in 1945 always strikes me as a weird story. We were occupied by the Japanese, and when the Japanese lost the war, we claimed our independence. Then, for three years, we were fighting off the Dutch, who colonized us before the Japanese. A country depleted after World War II tried to sneak its way back in. The whole thing strikes me as a story of sneaks, cheats, and bargains, but presented as heroic.

The main character of the book, from which this is adapted, intrigues me. Isa has lost everything that constitutes his role as a man in the war and his marriage, both in their marital bed and as a provider for the family. Then, heroism becomes peer pressure and, later, becomes a job and responsibility in order to put food on the table.Those subtle changes of certain roles in society are explored through other supporting characters, such as Fatimah; someone who is eager to fight, but forced to give into her duty as a mother and wife.

Perang Kota (This City is a Battlefield) is set against a grey area in history in 1946, when everyone greets each other with a celebration of their independence, “Merdeka!”(“Liberty!”) but the burning and warring city shows nothing worth celebrating. The president has left the capital and these men are blurring the lines between right and wrong, colonizers and colonized, hero and villain, friend and enemy, man and woman.