Interview: Kamila Andini – Before, Now & Then

It’s been a remarkable couple of years for Indonesian filmmaker Kamila Andini who’s career took flight at TIFF when she showcased The Seen and Unseen (2017) and then won the Platform competition a couple of years later with Yuni (2021). She quickly followed that with Before, Now & Then (formerly known as “Nana”) which would premiere at the 2022 Berlinale competition section (winning the Silver Berlin Bear for Best Supporting Performance by Laura Basuki). A drama about domestication (or being placed in a physical confined space) that is intertwined with a turbulent historical backdrop (1960s Indonesia), this is about a time, a place, about how two women can come together despite what would normally be a conversation non-starter. Deceptively minimalist, there is so much to admire in this film about people who haunt us and how one carries themselves.

I sat down with Kamila Andini at the 2022 edition of the Red Sea International Film Festival and got to discuss the current state of Indonesian cinema and where she finds herself in this current wave (worth mentioning she was mounting “Cigarette Girl” for Netflix), I got to discuss the character of Happy (brilliant take by Raden Nana Suhani) and her emotional IQ and finally, we briefly discussed the use of allegories in her cinema. Before, Now & Then was released by the Film Movement folks.