Ibuku premieres in Busan Competition with Hakim as grieving mother
A mother trying to reach her daughter on death row drives Ibuku, which premiered in Competition at the Busan Film Festival, Busan's main awards section, according to Variety.
The title means "my mother" in Indonesian. It is the fourth film from Indonesian writer-director Eddie Cahyono, and it stars Christine Hakim as Sumiati and Ayushita Nugraha as Sri, her daughter, according to Variety.
Sumiati is a widow in her 60s living alone in a small Javanese village. Her husband took his own life, leaving her recently widowed and isolated, according to Variety.
She is trying to gather enough money for travelling to Saudi Arabia to visit Sri in prison. Sri worked abroad and has been sentenced to death for killing her employer, who tried to rape her, according to Variety.
Sumiati carries another past. She was once a well-known performer of Jathilan, a form of Javanese dance also called Kuda Lumping, in which dancers move in time with gamelan music and horse-like props.
On the business side, Asian Shadows has boarded the film for world sales, the job of licensing distribution rights to buyers country by country, according to Variety. Cahyono arrived in Busan with a track record on the festival circuit. His award-winning feature Siti previously screened at Telluride, according to Variety.
What makes this stand out on the calendar is the pairing. A competition slot at a major Asian festival gives a local-language family story a shop window for international distributors.
