Cry Me A River (working title)

Syamsiah, a Balik woman in her fifties, has lived her entire life in Sepaku, Kalimantan. This area is all she knows, where the memories of her tribe live, where all the food and water come from.

However, when the construction of Indonesia’s new capital began, her world fell into pieces. The river grows murky with soil and cement, the fish vanish, and prices in the market surge beyond reach.

Instead of mourning & seeking help from the government or fitting in with the modernity this new city offers, Syamsiah is making her own future. With her husband, they leave their old house and move to a hill where the water still runs clear. There, she tries to live as her ancestors once did, through planting a small garden and foraging in the forest for food.

However, her son, Randy, lives and aspires to the modernity shaped by the very development that displaced her. His life unfolds within the world that is now inseparable from Syamsiah’s, with its promises, its logic, and its seduction. The trajectories between Syamsiah and her son live side by side without forcing resolution, allowing their differences to remain as part of the same lived reality.