OBJECT RECONNAISSANCE

During the 1965-66 Indonesian political crisis, activist Merah Muda fled to the Netherlands. Decades later, her granddaughter Ria is on a quest to find a missing family heirloom that holds the key to uncovering family secrets.

Mixing fact and fiction, the film tells the story of an Indonesian activist who escaped execution during the Jakarta massacres of the 1960s and fled to Amsterdam. Through her diaries – which are read in the film by her granddaughter in Amsterdam – we learn about her life as an Indonesian political fugitive in the cosmopolitan Amsterdam of the 1960s. The film captures a moment in the history of Amsterdam and the world through the eyes of a displaced woman. This resonates with current global migration flows and raises questions about the human condition of refugees worldwide. The film project starts from an Indonesian object in the collection of the Tropenmuseum that once served as a dowry.

Amid the turbulent 1965-66 political crisis in Indonesia, Merah Muda, an activist of Jakarta’s Movement of Conscious Women, narrowly escapes death and flees to the Netherlands. In the present day, her granddaughter, Ria Bloem, sets out on a quest to uncover her grandmother’s mysterious past. Sifting through letters, photographs, and family keepsakes, Ria stumbles upon images of Merah holding a cherished seashell—an heirloom now lost to time. Intrigued, Ria sets out to recover this missing object, hoping it will illuminate her own identity. However, as her search deepens, she unravels long-hidden family secrets intertwined with Indonesia’s post-colonial history.