Mbah Jhiwo

Yono, or Mbah Jhiwo (Ancient Soul), is one of the miners who carry large sulphur rocks up the side of the Kawa Ijen crater every day. One morning, his wife unexpectedly leaves the family home, changing a routine where time had seemed to stop. Since then, trapped like Sisyphus in an eternal task and guided by his faith in getting her back, Yono will confront similar events which will transform their aspect as his beliefs change from animism, to Islam and to capitalism. An ethno-fictional film which explores otherness and questions the myth of progress in the neo-colonial reality of the islands of the South Seas.

"The plot is simple, even archetypical, that’s why it lends itself so well to being repeated. Yono is a sulphur miner living in eastern Java. One day, his wife Oliv leaves him, and he tries to get her back. Another day, his mother falls ill, and he tries to get her well. The plot’s outcome is unchanged with every repetition, although the three resultant variants are far from identical, as one of the belief systems that usually inform life in conjunction is brought to the fore each time: animism, Islam and finally capitalism. Oliv is thus to be won back via magic, pilgrimage or Facebook, while the cure for Yono’s mother lies in ceremony, prayer or simple vital signs. Greenery gives way to billboards and neon, and cryptocurrency and mobile phones cast new spells, even if each fresh facet teased out of the setting contributes to a portrait of one and the same place. Regardless of what’s practised around it, the mountain keeps spewing sulphurous smoke, making outlines indistinct and boundaries blur, like the film itself: a billowing, uncategorisable cloud of anthropology, parable, metaphysics, observation and collaboration, where even the filmmakers themselves briefly come into view."
(Berlinale)