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"A rich mosaic of Indonesia today... poignant, breathtaking, and a singularly stellar vérité triumph." - Sundance Film Festival
Dutch filmmaker Leonard Retel Helmrich rounds off his award-winning documentary trilogy about the desperately poor Sjamsuddin family with this affectionate and powerful conclusion to the series. Helmrich has followed the Sjamsuddins, a Christian- Muslim family living in the slums of Jakarta, for more than a dozen years, constructing this quiet epic of life on the periphery.
Broadly revolving around the family's hopes for Tari, the teenage daughter who might be the first in the clan to attend college, Position Among the Stars grows to become an expansive portrait of an Indonesia in tumult. Shot through with a deep affection for the people he chronicles, Helmrich's is documentary filmmaking at its most genuine and affecting.
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at Sundance.
D Leonard Retel Helmrich P Hetty Naaijkens-Retel Helmrich Dist Antidote Films L Bahasa w/English subtitles TD digibeta/2010