In person: Mouly Surya, director
Watch the trailer.
A festival hit from Cannes to Toronto to Busan and everywhere in between, this “thoroughly enjoyable, visually ravishing feminist Western” (Lisa Nesselson, Screen International) is set in the beautifully rugged landscape of Indonesia’s Simba Island. Its eponymous heroine, a widow living alone in the remote countryside, is assaulted and robbed of her cattle by a gang of bandits. After dispatching her attackers with some poison soup, she sets off on a journey of redemption—toting the head of the bandits’ leader as a trophy. Mixing Simba Island’s unique local culture with artistic antecedents ranging from Caravaggio to Sergio Leone, Mouly Surya created one of last year’s most talked-about films. (Dir.: Mouly Surya, Indonesia/France/Malaysia/Thailand, 2017, 95 min., DCP, Bahasa Indonesia with English subtitles)