BY HELLENA SOUISA

11 JUNE 2026 

This may be the most controversial film in Indonesia right now.

After being screened offline at nearly 2,000 locations across Indonesia and abroad, the documentary Pig Feast: Colonialism in Our Time (Pesta Babi: Kolonialisme di Zaman Kita) was officially released online on May 22.

Within just 14 days of release, Pig Feast had already been viewed more than 13 million times on the YouTube channel JubiTV.

Jubi is a West Papua-based media outlet and one of the documentary’s production collaborators, alongside Greenpeace Indonesia, Watchdoc, Koperasi Indonesia Baru, Pusaka Bentala Rakyat, and LBH Papua Merauke.

The title Pig Feast (Pesta Babi) is taken from a tradition of the Muyu people in West Papua known as Awon Atatbon. This is a customary ritual involving pigs as social and cultural symbols used to mark the continuity and preservation of Papua’s forests and natural environment.

The 90-minute film, directed by Dandhy Dwi Laksono and Cypri Jehan Paju Dale, is set in South Papua. It follows Indigenous communities resisting the loss of their land and livelihoods due to a government-backed National Strategic Project (Proyek Strategis Nasional, or PSN).

The documentary argues that Indonesia’s food estate project is merely a cover for a large-scale bioethanol venture benefiting particular groups, while exposing the broader web of political and economic interests behind it, including alleged military involvement.

Filling the information drought on Papua

There are several reasons that may explain the widespread public enthusiasm for independently organised community screenings and discussions of Pig Feast at thousands of locations across Indonesia and abroad, as well as its millions of YouTube views.

First and foremost is the information and content the film offers about what is happening in Papua. It describes it as the world’s largest ongoing deforestation project carried out in the name of a PSN, the clearing of 2.5 million hectares of tropical rainforest, and the displacement of 107,000 people, all taking place amid continuing armed conflict in the region.

Second, it is no secret that the ownership structure of Indonesia’s mainstream media, particularly broadcast media, which is controlled by a small group of conglomerates, has affected the diversity of its content.

Because of this ownership structure and the entanglement of political and economic interests behind it, the content of Indonesia’s mainstream television media, as I have previously written, tends to be uniform, elite-centric, Jakarta-centric, Java-centric, and urban-centric.

As a result, there is little or no space for the voices of marginalised groups, communities outside Java, or critical issues that do not generate significant advertising revenue, such as environmental conservation, human rights abuses, and attacks on environmental defenders.

This means that information from and about Papua is rarely seen on mainstream national broadcast media screens. Meanwhile, in the digital sphere, we also know there have previously been attempts to shut down internet access in Papua.

Against this backdrop, Pig Feast, which offers in-depth and comprehensive information about the issues faced by Papuans, emerges to fill the void and address the drought of crucial information about Papua.

Even in an era when media consumption and distribution patterns are increasingly governed by algorithms, Pig Feast’s grassroots community screening model has managed to overcome the dominance of those algorithms.

It is therefore important to view Pig Feast as a success story for alternative media, which Downing, and Hackett and Carroll, define as media that are ‘progressive, explicitly opposed to particular axes of domination (corporate capitalism, heterosexism, racism, state authoritarianism) and openly assume a stance of advocacy rather than pseudo-objectivity, experiment with new aesthetic styles, and address issues marginalised in hegemonic media.’

Pig Feast, like most of Laksono’s documentaries, rarely includes interviews with authorities.

The aim is to balance narratives in the public sphere by giving a platform to communities whose voices are nearly absent from mainstream media.

By doing so, the filmmaker rejects the notion of giving equal voice to those who perpetuate injustice, and critiques the idea of journalistic ‘objectivity,’ which is often seen as serving entrenched commercial or political interests that maintain relations of domination.

This is both a reminder and a reaffirmation of the role and principles of alternative media.

Screenings disrupted, branded ‘foreign agents,’ and reported to police

Because of the issues raised in Pig Feast, including the names and institutions mentioned in the film, the documentary has been met with intense backlash.

Ekspedisi Indonesia Baru, one of the documentary’s production collaborators, reported that of more than 2,000 screenings held so far, at least 50 had been dispersed, cancelled, or subjected to intimidation.

The reasons varied, ranging from claims that the ‘title is provocative,’ and the need to ‘maintain public order’ and ‘anticipate security concerns,’ to allegations of ‘failure to coordinate permits.’

Some screenings were also accused of ‘not possessing a Film Censorship Pass Certificate (STLS) from the Indonesian Film Censorship Board,’ even though Pig Feast, as a film with a ‘non-commercial purpose’, falls into an exempt category.

Off-screen, director Dandhy Laksono has also become the target of black campaigns on social media, where he has been labelled a ‘foreign agent’ and ‘provocateur’.

Most recently, Laksono and LBH Papua Merauke director John Teddy Wakum were reported to the Jakarta Metropolitan Police by one of the figures featured in the documentary, Yasinta Moiwend.

Before filing the report, Moiwend, who in Pig Feast firmly rejected the PSN and criticised the government, later appeared to reverse her stance and express support for the project through social media posts.

Moiwend said she objected to her face being shown in the documentary and subsequently, while also demanding that screenings of the film be stopped.

However, members of Moiwend’s family viewed her sudden change of attitude and police report as suspicious, suspecting that she acted under pressure and intimidation from certain parties.

A new chapter for Pig Feast: a test for Papua, alternative media, and democracy

Efforts to drag the film’s director and one of its collaborators into legal proceedings, following waves of intimidation, repression, screening dispersals, disinformation, and accusations of being ‘foreign agents’, amount to a test on three fronts at once.

First, this is a test for future information and reporting about Papua. What Pig Feast is experiencing recalls the case of Indonesian human rights defenders Fatia Maulidyanti and Haris Azhar in 2023 and 2024.

Both were charged after being reported for defamation by then Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Binsar Panjaitan over a video in which Azhar and Maulidyanti discussed research by nine civil society organisations alleging Panjaitan’s involvement in mining businesses and military operations in Papua.

Although the court eventually acquitted Azhar and Maulidyanti, the recurring pattern of criminalising the messengers of Papua-related information, while leaving the substance of the information itself untouched, represents an attempt to obscure problems in Papua that deserve national attention.

Second, this is also a test for future collaborative work between alternative media and civil society. What Laksono and Wakum are experiencing, like Azhar and Maulidyanti, creates a chilling effect not only for those who amplify marginalised voices, but also for the marginalised voices themselves and for issues neglected by mainstream media, particularly civil society perspectives confronting elite dominance.

Third, this new chapter in the story of Pig Feast is ultimately also a test for democracy itself. Can Indonesia be a democracy where freedom of expression and opinion are guaranteed, and where diversity of information, sustained in part by alternative media, remains a crucial pillar of its society?