Indonesia has selected Kamila Andini’s “Four Seasons in Java” as its entry for the Best International Feature Film category at the upcoming Academy Awards, giving the drama a shot at the honor five years after Andini’s “Yuni” carried the same distinction.
The film, known in Indonesian as “Empat Musim Pertiwi,” stars Putri Marino as Pertiwi, a woman released after roughly two decades in prison for killing a man during an attempted rape. Her return home collides with the arrival of electricity in her remote village, a shift Andini has described as a clash between modern progress and buried trauma that keeps recurring in everyday life. Christine Hakim, Arya Saloka and Hana Malasan round out a cast built around some of Indonesia’s most recognized performers.
Andini wrote and directed the picture, working again with Marino after their Netflix series “Cigarette Girl.” She calls the new film her angriest work yet, telling reporters she found herself wanting to curse while researching the script even though fury was not her intention going in. The story blends elements of a revenge western with touches of the supernatural, using the return of a wrongly vilified woman to probe how rural communities decide who deserves belief and who does not.
“Four Seasons in Java” had its world premiere as a Centrepiece selection at the Toronto International Film Festival this month, the third time Andini has brought a feature there after “The Seen and Unseen” in 2017 and “Yuni” in 2021. That earlier film won Toronto’s Platform Prize before becoming Indonesia’s Oscar submission for the 94th Academy Awards. Sales company Goodfellas has since picked up international distribution rights.
The production drew financing from an unusually wide coalition of backers spanning Indonesia, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Singapore, Germany and Thailand, reflecting how Southeast Asian filmmakers increasingly lean on European and regional funds to get ambitious projects made. Andini has said these markets now serve a dual purpose, providing capital while introducing Indonesian storytelling to industry gatekeepers who rarely encounter it otherwise.
Should “Four Seasons in Java” advance through the Academy’s shortlist process, it would mark Indonesia’s latest attempt to break into the final five nominees, a milestone the country has yet to reach despite a growing run of festival-recognized films from Andini and her peers over the past decade.
