Tutaha Subang

Tutaha Subang, A Tale for My Daughter brings memory to life through hand-animated still images, where the past lingers unresolved, echoing cycles of trauma, resistance, and inheritance. Suspended between movement and stillness, presence and absence, the film challenges linear time, showing memory as fluid and unpredictable—capable of piercing through generations.

Through a letter to her daughter, Mila, Rikarda Maa reflects on love, survival, and the looming threat of palm oil expansion encroaching on the Awyu tribe’s ancestral land. Her words merge with the Sasi Procession, a ritual where the Awyu raise a towering red cross in defiance. As time seems to freeze, the film captures the journey of a woman, a mother, and a fighter, bound to a community＇s deep ties to land and ancestry. Tutaha Subang questions the fragile line between progress and preservation, between survival and erasure.