Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts

Marlina (Marsha Timothy), a recently bereaved widow, is set upon by a group of men with rape on their minds—but she sure knows how to fight back. Emerging from the encounter with a severed head in her possession, our heroine sets off on a mission to seek legal justice. In her dealings with the police, she’ll face indifference and incompetence, and there are other obstacles thrown in her path. But she’s a dedicated woman, and, in addition to the head, she’s packing a machete…

I had the rare opportunity to watch this film with the writer-director, Mouly Surya, when I was taking part in the Asian Film Academy in Korea in 2019. It was a 9 am screening, and Mouly was the directing mentor for the program, and this was the first time I would get the chance to explore her work. I remember being entranced, as the hotel conference room the film was being projected in transformed into rural Indonesia, a place with wide expanses, rolling hills, and bloody vengeance. Mouly took the tropes of a spaghetti western, to tell a blazing feminist fable of heart-wrenching solidarity.

Her use of genre to drive home the nail-biting tension of our protagonist’s journey inspired me to dive headfirst into genre as both a political and cinematic tool. Etched into my mind, is the scene in which Marlina has to recount her harrowing ordeal to a bored cop. His listless attitude, and line of questioning, make it clear to Marlina that there is no justice for her here. The film finds solace and catharsis through community, and offers no easy answers. I’m thrilled to share the world’s first satay western with VIFF audiences—a pressure cooker of a film, that offers spectacular violence and deep reflection in equal measure.

Zarrar Khan, Leading Lights Curator

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