7 Best Movies Set in or About Indonesia

7 Movies Set in or About Indonesia

Foreign-led films whose sustained setting or subject remains centered on Indonesia.

1. 

   1. The Act of Killing

   2012

   In this astonishing documentary, aging leaders of Indonesia's 1960s death squads cheerfully reenact the mass killings they carried out, restaging their atrocities as movie scenes — until the performances begin to crack their bravado. A landmark, disturbing work.

2. 

   2. The Year of Living Dangerously

   1982

   A young Australian correspondent arrives in Indonesia amid the political ferment of the mid-1960s and, guided by an enigmatic photographer, falls in love and in over his head as the Sukarno regime teeters toward collapse. Peter Weir's atmospheric romantic drama.

3. 

   3. Outcast of the Islands

   1951

   A disgraced European clerk fleeing scandal is taken in at a remote trading post in the Indonesian islands, where his weakness and betrayals bring ruin on those who helped him. Carol Reed's brooding adaptation of Joseph Conrad.

4. 

   4. Gold

   2016

   A down-on-his-luck prospector and a maverick geologist stake everything on a wild hunt for gold deep in the Indonesian jungle, and their improbable strike sets off a whirlwind of fortune and deception. Based loosely on a true story.

5. 

   5. Merdeka 17805

   ムルデカ 17805 · 2001

   Based on true events, this drama follows Japanese soldiers who chose to stay in Indonesia after the war and fight alongside the locals against the returning European colonizers. A wartime epic.

6. 

   6. Christmas in the Jungle

   Jõulud džunglis · 2020

   A Latvian family relocates to exotic Indonesia, where the mother struggles to adjust, the teenage daughter hits puberty, and the workaholic father is largely absent, all seen through the eyes of ten-year-old Paula. A warm family comedy-drama.

7. 

   7. At World's End

   Ved verdens ende · 2009

   When a TV crew investigating a rare white flower in the Indonesian rainforest is gunned down by a reclusive Danish outlaw, a bizarre Danish expedition — including a psychiatrist — is sent in after him. A quirky action-comedy.