Jakarta-based Matta Cinema Production is shopping a six-project slate at Busan’s Asian Contents & Film Market, with budgets ranging from $440,000 to $1.1 million and production timelines stretching through 2028.
The company is unveiling its lineup under the banner “True Stories of Indonesia: From Local Roots to Global Screen” at ACFM’s Happy Hour Event, seeking international collaboration while maintaining what CEO and producer Nugroho Dewanto describes as an 80% focus on Indonesian audiences.
The centerpiece of the slate is a trilogy of crime dramas developed in partnership with Tempo Media Group, Indonesia’s largest investigative media organization, founded in 1971. The three films adapt real cases from Tempo’s criminal investigations, each carrying a $600,000 budget and slated for production between 2026-2028 in collaboration with Pal8 Pictures, Tempo’s subsidiary production company.
“The Doors of Kanjuruhan” dramatizes the Kanjuruhan Stadium football tragedy in Malang that killed 131 people due to tear gas deployment. The synopsis describes a young family’s dream night at a football derby that turns into a nightmare when tear gas and locked gates trigger a deadly stadium stampede.
“The Longest Night” is based on a university bullying case that led to a medical student’s death in Semarang, following a young anesthesiology resident trapped in a brutal culture of bullying who rises from a suicide attempt to fight back with evidence.
“Village of the Hopefuls” tackles Indonesia’s nationwide online gambling crisis through the story of three lives in a struggling village — a boy yearning to escape poverty, a woman burdened with family duty, and a father-to-be saving for new life — until online gambling threatens to destroy them all.
Moving into production sooner is “My Own Last Supper,” an adaptation of an award-winning novel that enters production in November with a $480,000 budget. The film follows a 76-year-old widower who gathers his children for one last dinner, unveiling a hidden memoir of love, loss, and the scars of history before choosing the sea as his reunion with his deceased wife. The film will be directed by Ismail Babseth, whose previous feature “Sara” had its world premiere at Busan in 2023.
Two additional projects are in development with Ruang Basbeth Bercerita, led by Lyza Anggraheni, winner of the TAICCA Award at last year’s Busan Asian Film School Pitching Project. “Last Resort,” written by the late Gertjan Zuilhof, former programmer of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, carries the slate’s highest budget at $1.2 million. The film follows a Japanese single mother who builds an illicit “suicide tourism” business on a remote Indonesian island to give her daughter a better life, only to have her world shaken by violence, love, and ghosts from her past.
“The Unforgettable Flavours” draws inspiration from “Mustika Rasa,” a 1965 recipe book initiated by Indonesia’s first president Soekarno, with a $720,000 budget. The story follows a modern young officer assigned to lead the cookbook project who journeys across Indonesia to preserve its culinary soul while navigating a fragile love tested by the storms of 1965.
Matta Cinema Production, Tempo Media Group, and Ruang Basbeth Bercerita are exhibiting at Pavilion Jakarta, hosted by the Jakarta Provincial Government and Indonesia’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology.
