The Photograph

Colour, 35 mm
Indonesia, France, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, 2007, 94 min
EP – European premiere
Section: Official Selection - Competition

Synopsis

25-year-old Sita makes a living as a prostitute in a karaoke bar, but not even this is enough to support her sick mother who is looking after her little girl in the country, nor does she have sufficient funds to pay off her debt to the brutal pimp Suroso. Desperation forces the young woman to find an uninviting but cheap bedsit in an attic room above a photographic studio. Its owner, the taciturn, withdrawn aging photographer Johan, begins to form a part of her life – if in quite a different way from the men she has known until now. The woman resolves to start afresh. When she discovers that the sick photographer only has a few months to live, she decides to fulfil his last wishes. She finds out that three photographs which Johan plans to take are linked to the tragic and dark past of a man who unwittingly transformed her life. An intimate story about the relationship between two traumatised drifters who chance upon one another through the fragile and elusive world of photographic images.

About the director

Nan Triveni Achnas (b. 1963, Singapore) got herself noticed with her short film The Little Gayo Singer (Ceh kucak gayo, 1995) and debuted with the feature-length comedy Kuldesak (1999). She won numerous awards for her film Whispering Sands (Pasir berbisik, 2001),  which was included in the section Another View at the KVIFF 2002 and won numerous awards (Brisbane, Deauville Asian Film Festival, Oslo). The film was also screened in competition at the Rotterdam IFF and won the Special Jury Prize at the Seattle IFF in 2002. After the short documentary Invisible Garments, Expensive Soles (2001) she directed the medium-length film The Flag (Bendera, 2002), which she also produced. The drama The Photograph (2007) is her latest film.