23rd IDFA opens with yellow ribbons and documentary State of the Stars

If you see someone wearing a yellow ribbon one of these days, it is in protest against the cuts to arts and culture. As might be expected, Ally Derks, director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, in her speech at the opening of the 23rd edition of the film event, took a hard line against the impending attack on the arts. Art is not an elite toy, but the soul of society. Art is everywhere, not only in opera houses, but also in books and billboards, in fashion and in the songs you hear on the streets. Following actions in Italy, Derks called for people to wear the yellow ribbon at the Tuschinski theatre last night.

Art is life. To illustrate that statement, the opening film Stand of the Stars came just at the right time. This documentary that lets us empathise with the worries of a poor family in the Indonesian capital Jakarta is the conclusion of a triptych that filmmaker Leonard Retel Helmrich began in 2001. His agile, lyrical camera style has been widely praised.
Main protagonist in this third volume is teenage girl Tari, who is constantly reminded by her critical uncle Bakti and grandmother Rumidjah that she must succeed where the others failed. Sulking, she hears it, but seems more interested in boyfriends and the latest mobile phone than in studying at university. Until the long-suffering Bakti can't take it anymore.
Once again, Retel Helmrich manages to capture the chaos and heartbeat of life in an uninterrupted stream of images, so to speak. It is a film that sucks you in, unafraid of unabashedly beautiful images but also surprisingly humorous. It is precisely the zooming in on details that makes this plodding family universal and relatable. If documentary is the art of telling true stories, then Stand of the Stars is a great example.