march around the world 2026 | 4/30 | 🇮🇩 Indonesia

A modern Indonesian Western film, Mouly Surya's Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts is a story of a woman's revenge. Or so it seems. But Marlina isn't really motivated by wanting to hunt down and harm the men who hurt her. Instead, her weary quest for justice reminds me more of Zhang Yimou's The Story of Qiu Ju than an archetypical woman-gets-revenge story like Lady Snowblood. Contrary to what you might expect, there's nothing that I would describe as a fight scene - the handful of overtly violent moments are mostly brief and bloody. Much of the film, instead, consists of gorgeous static landscape shots (colourful, but not oversaturated) as we follow Marlina on her journey. The interior scenes are well done, too; a lot of very deliberate, rectangular shots (at right angles to the buildings they're in) that contrast nicely with the dusty hills of Sumba's landscapes in the exterior scenes. The soundtrack was also fantastic and really helped to cement the Western feel.