
World Premiere
Directors Rheza Arden and Banu Wirandoko document a 28-year quest for glory in this engrossing film. Indonesian sculptor Nyoman Nuarta’s goal is to build the world’s largest brass and copper structure: the Garuda Wisnu Kencana statue. Featuring two Hindu gods, the statue is to be located in an abandoned limestone quarry in Bali, which Nyoman plans to turn into a park. To meet his objective, the artist will have to contend with public opposition, political turmoil, and many other obstacles… Using animation, archival footage, and time-lapse photography among other tools, Arden and Wirandoko paint a vivid picture of large-scale obsession. The footage of the GWK construction is often breathtaking, and in Nyoman, the filmmakers have a multifaceted subject to centre their film on — he is both businessman and artist, visionary and pragmatist, megalomaniac and humble family man. Fascinating, suspenseful, and marked by moments of vertiginous beauty, Sculpting the Giant is a truly remarkable documentary.
October 2 & 4: Q&A with co-director Rheza Arden Wiguna & crew
Presented by
Series Media Partner
Community Partner
Nyoman Nuarta, Cynthia Lakshmi Nuarta
Indonesia
2022
Portraits
In Bahasa Indonesia and English with English subtitles
Graphic Violence
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Julian Grimmond, John Fitzgerald
Producer
Maulana Aziz
Screenwriter
Maulana Aziz, Sutansyah Marahakim
Cinematography
Dini Aristya Wulandari
Editor
Dini Aristya Wulandari
Original Music
Bintang Olii
Directors


Banu Wirandoko & Rheza Arden Wiguna
With an educational background in Fine Arts, Banu Wirandoko and Rheza Arden Wiguna have developed a refined taste for visual arts. Both have been exploring audiovisual design techniques together since 2012 and fell in love with film and video as means of storytelling. Combining Rheza’s whimsical visual explorations with Banu’s astute musical sensibilities, they teamed up as first-time filmmakers in directing Sculpting The Giant.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Samia
Despite growing up in Mogadishu, Somalia, during the civil war, Samia Yusuf Omar persists in her dream of becoming an Olympic athlete and competes in Beijing, 2008 -- with London, 2012 next on her agenda. Based on a true story.
Sudan, Remember Us
A portrait of young artists and activists, Meddeb's doc charts events in Khartoum between 2019 -- in the immediate wake of the revolution that deposed dictator Omar al-Bashir -- and the mood four years later, when the country has been torn apart by civil war.
Margaret
Seventeen-year-old Lisa is rocked with guilt after a woman is killed in a traffic accident. But that’s only one thread in a teeming social tapestry this intense, passionate teen must negotiate as she comes of age in a time of contradiction and confusion.
E.1027 Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea
In this elegant non fiction film, actors play Irish designer Eileen Gray, her lover, the architect Jean Badovici, and modernist superstar Le Corbusier, who would become obsessed with the house on the Cote d'Azur that Eileen designed.
Scarecrow
A bittersweet, touching buddy movie with Gene Hackman as a volatile tramp, Max, and Al Pacino as "Lion", a drifter now set on returning to the wife and kid he abandoned years ago. Hackman's favourite of his own movies.