“Slavery is despicable, yet the objective is to offer a multifaceted view,” write the directors of the Belgian project Slave Island, pitched at MIA. “A film that reflects on the universal mechanisms in which there are rulers and victims, in which religion is both a danger and a solution whilst our own moral judgement is an endless project under construction.”
The personal dilemma in the documentary project is stark. Jeremy Kewuan, co-director of the film and an activist for over a decade on the remote Sumba island in Indonesia, faces the ‘invisible power of ideology and faith’ as he combats traditions of present-day slavery on a remote island. Because what he also realises is that even in his own life, he is stuck in that same pattern of tradition.
The project notes tell how Jeremy’s girlfriend is unable to marry him due to an unfulfilled dowry payment hanging over his head. Trapped by cultural principles on both sides, Jeremy ‘victimizes’ his girlfriend through his activist ideals. To end slavery, structural support is needed, Jeremy realizes. Although he achieves some breakthroughs, the mere size and complexity of the problem require more than his video-activism…
The project started quite by chance, producer Van der Heyden points out. Co-director Jimmy Hendrickx, who lives ‘part-time’ in Jakarta needed a break and decided to go to Sumba island as he heard it was very beautiful, a place he could practice his photography.
“But the moment he arrived on the island, he got into a car with these nuns and Rina, the victim [of slavery, seen in the film trailer] was sitting in the back of the car. So that’s actually the very first footage he shot. He was surprised that this girl was coming back from like slavery in Malaysia,” says Van der Heyden. “He just stumbled into this story. So he reached out to me and said ‘look at this footage, I met these nuns and they’re dealing with local slavery, there’s something going on on this island we should investigate.’ And so as soon as I saw the footage, I was like, okay, clearly this is our next film.”
Together with local activist and co-filmmaker Kewuan, Hendrickx travels the island, following the personal stories of five side characters, including that of Rina, a traumatized teenager whose father sold her to Malaysia when she was just 11. Jeremy interacts with these characters as they suffer “bouts of anger and refusal, but sometimes also consideration and recognition,” while describing the practices of injustice each from their own perspective.
The film notes further stress how what starts as an investigative documentary develops into a psychological portrait of an activist. How so?
“Well, the thing is that it sort of flows organically because the [anti-slavery] activist is Jeremy who’s also a co-director of the film, but he becomes a main character,” explains Van der Heyden. “The two directors become friends and they’re discussing about how do you deal with this situation. [But] Jimmy is a foreigner on this island and it’s hard to tell people to stop doing what they’ve been doing for so long, like how do you preserve a culture or a tradition, but take away the sort of things that we find morally wrong? And [there is] this whole discussion around what is morally right. And are we the ones to tell others how to behave or how to live their lives or how to treat people?”
The €605,000 budget production has Estonia, France and Taiwan on board as partners. Production shooting is planned for 2022 and the ultimate goal is to present the completed doc during the first quarter of 2023.
In terms of Impact, at the Kyoto Peace conference in October 2021 Van der Heyden will propose a fundraiser program partnership with an NGO to focus on mental health care for orphan children and teenagers on the island, and help improve the conditions of the children who have been conditioned to slavery. As the film is intended for international roll-out, audiences will be able to donate to the program through a QR code integration at the end of the film as well as on leaflets.
