
Motherland Memories

Synopsis
Ompung Putra Boru, a sixties indigenous Batak woman from Humbang Hasundutan, North Sumatra, retraces her life stories through photographs that interweave her past and present as a wife, mother, healer and indigenous land defender in two neighboring villages. Her multi-layered stories are juxtaposed with visual records of everyday life in the two villages, where people’s living space is still increasingly threatened by a giant pulp expansion.
Credits

Moses Parlindungan Ompusunggu
Moses is a prize-winning visual anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker. He is the Executive Director of Atmakanta Center for Visual Ethnography, a Jakarta-based research firm. Previous awards include Best Indonesian Feature Documentary at Festival Film Dokumenter (2022) and Open Society Fellowships (2025).
