Object Reconnaissance

Amidst the political crisis of 1965-66, activist Merah Muda fled from Indonesia to the Netherlands. Decades later, her granddaughter looks for a lost family heirloom, which turns out to be the key to a long-buried family secret.

Combining fact and fiction, the story develops of an Indonesian activist who fled to the Netherlands in the 1960s. A young woman comes across photographs of her grandmother holding a shell, a family heirloom that has since been lost. Fascinated, she decides to go and look for it. Gradually, she unravels family secrets that are intertwined with the postcolonial history of Indonesia, when grandmother and activist Merah Muda escaped execution during the Jakarta massacres. A film that makes you look through the eyes of an uprooted woman, while raising questions about the current waves of refugees worldwide.