By Christhalia Wiloto

In a lakeside fishing village in West Sumatra, Indonesia, an old man wins a large sweepstakes prize of two billion rupiahs from a soap company. The whole village is ecstatic — the man plans to share the prize money to create new developments for their entire community. Everyone imagines all the good that this money will bring them for generations to come. However, before the old man can officially claim the prize money, he dies.

All the way from the capital city Jakarta, the soap company sends its representative, Anwar, to travel to the village and verify the recipient of the sweepstakes. With Anwar’s arrival at Lake Maninjau and the fate of the prize money up in the air, the whole village must band together and conspire to convince him that the old man is still alive.

So goes the set-up of Paul Agusta’s hilarious comedy, Onde Mande! (The Prize!), which screened at the Indonesian Film Festival New York 2023. Most of the dialogue in the movie is spoken in the Minang dialect, which is rare in Indonesian cinema. Agusta had written and directed the movie in honor of his late father, explaining, “My dad once said to me, ‘When are you going to make a movie that I can actually watch?’ That’s how I started thinking up this story about the village that my dad was born in and the people who still live there.” Agusta himself was born and raised in Jakarta and had gone to film school in America.

Anwar, the Minang salaryman sent by his corporate office in Jakarta to travel “home” to West Sumatra on a business trip, is one of the few characters who doesn’t speak Minang and only speaks in Indonesian with the other villagers. Having been born and raised in Jakarta, this work trip was his first time in West Sumatra. Returning to a place he didn’t fully realize he had been pulled apart from unravels his past. Onde Mande! might be a comedy, but it’s a story full of heart.

I sat down with Emir Mahira, the actor who played Anwar, over Zoom to talk about his recent homecoming to Indonesia and return to acting after studying abroad in Singapore and Canada. There is always a tension between staying, leaving and returning — the decisions we all have to make about what to hold on to and what to let go of to make space for something new.

Christhalia Wiloto: What drew you into this script and made you say yes to this role?

Emir Mahira: I’m a quarter Minang. It’s a part of my own culture that I’ve never actually had an opportunity to explore. I only heard about it from my dad — how proud he is of Minang culture. This film allowed me to explore a part of myself that I never even realized was missing from my life. Plus, I’ve heard from many friends about Paul and how lovely he is, so I was excited to work with him.

Talk to me about what it was like to work with director Paul Agusta, someone who was also trying to make sense of his own Minang heritage.

You could tell from the get-go that this was his passion project. If you’re familiar with his previous films, you’ll recognize that Onde Mande! is very out of character for Paul. He usually makes movies that are deep in complex ways and require a lot of thinking. In contrast, Onde Mande! is a light-hearted comedy.

Working on this film allowed him to channel his childhood. We could see it as soon as the cast and crew got to Padang to start shooting. Paul was so excited to be back home and to eat the local dishes. Discovering Padang culture with someone who grew up with it made the experience all the more interesting. Paul’s energy definitely rubbed off on all of us.

Many of the other cast members in this movie — Shenina Cinnamon, Ajil Ditto and Shahabi Sakri — were also cast for their Minang heritage. As young actors who grew up in Jakarta, what was it like to travel to West Sumatra to tell this Minang story together?

It made the experience so much more special than if I had just traveled to Padang on my own. I loved that I had friends who I could rediscover Padang with. We were all on the same page together, so it didn’t feel like you were the only one lost. These people were just as lost as you were and they are just as curious as you are about Minang culture. And then we had Paul, the leader, who guided us through it all.

This project was so cathartic. Before shooting Onde Mande!, I was working on a hectic project. Throughout the shoot for Onde Mande!, though, we were at a homestay literally by Lake Maninjau. Each morning, I woke up to a view of that lake. I would have my coffee just looking towards that beautiful lake. It felt like — look, I was definitely working. But it felt like I was getting paid to go on a holiday. I was just getting paid to hang out with my friends, eat good food and learn about a culture that is ours.

That sounds like the best deal to be getting out of a project.

Yeah! As an actor, sometimes you can’t help but wonder, Do I really want to be doing this? A lot of projects demand so much from you. They can get physically and mentally draining. You begin to think about how long you can really live a life like that. Onde Mande! was one of those projects that reminded me that this is why I do this. This is why I love acting.

You started acting at a young age, starring in Garuda di Dadaku when you were 12. You did a few other movies after your debut—several more family movies, the sequel to Garuda di Dadaku, and you even played young Sukarno in Sukarno, the 2013 biopic of Indonesia’s first President. Then you took a break from acting during the time that you were living and studying abroad. Tell me what it has been like to return to acting these last few years.

I was ready to leave acting behind when I moved to Canada for university. I studied marketing, I thought I’d get a job at a start-up. There was a point in my life when I couldn’t go to a restroom somewhere without getting recognized. I felt like that was a bit much. I would describe myself as an outgoing introvert. I like having time to myself and, growing up, there were times when I felt like I couldn’t have that as a big-time child actor. There weren’t many other child actors my age back then. It was daunting and isolating.

Coming back to acting now as an adult did feel like coming back home, though. Acting is like one of your exes that you had to break up with so that you can realize that she was your true love. It was part of the process. I needed to leave it so that I could return to it with more perspective and appreciation for the craft.

As much as I know that I needed it, taking that time away for myself made it difficult to return too. When I finally did return to Indonesia and I wanted to get back into acting, a lot of people didn’t even want to look at me. I became new to the industry again. You haven’t proven yourself yet, you don’t have the skills, a lot of people are more attractive than you, you don’t have as many followers on social media as all these other actors working now — things like that.

Indonesian Film Festival New York 2023 by Nyoman Cerrens

Onde Mande! is also a film about homecoming. You’ve spoken about what it was like to come back to acting, but what was it like to come home to Indonesia after living abroad in Singapore and Canada for so many years?

It was a culture shock. So many things are different. Traffic in Jakarta riles me up. There was no such thing as traffic in Vancouver. You would maybe wait 10 minutes, 15 minutes tops in front of a red light. That’s what we would consider traffic in Canada. In Indonesia, you have to plan an extra hour or two whenever you make plans to meet up with someone — to get to any destination — because of how bad the traffic can get.

That’s one thing I had to get used to. Religion is another thing that I had to get used to. There are a lot of things that I wouldn’t think twice about openly speaking out on in Canada, but that I would have to be more sensitive about here in Indonesia. In terms of religion and sexuality, those are things that I’ve had to readjust to.

The values I learned in Canada that I believe are essential to humanity — I don’t take those for granted. And yet, I can’t expect every Indonesian to have the same values as me or to understand where I’m coming from when I speak on these issues. I know that I have to earn the public’s trust before I can really advocate for the values that I believe will make Indonesia an even greater country and society to live in. That’s what I want to accomplish through my work as an actor.

Merantau — an Indonesian word that means to wander or to leave your place of origin and build a life elsewhere — is a big part of Minang culture. Onde Mande! is a story about a village by the shores of Lake Meninjau that is filled with people who decide to stay. There is a tension here between staying, leaving and returning.

What do you think the movie was trying to say about migration and what did you want to portray through your character, Anwar — the Minang salaryman who was sent by his corporate office in Jakarta to travel “home” to West Sumatra on a business trip?

It’s very common in Indonesia for people to have to leave their families back home to pursue a more favorable career elsewhere. A lot of people from all across Indonesia come to Jakarta to Merantau.

This movie is relatable to a lot of people in Indonesia, not just people from Padang. The beauty of movies is that you can interpret it however you want, but the way that I interpreted the juxtaposition — or the similarities, I would say — between Anwar, who went to that village in Padang, and the subplot with the two brothers from Padang who were sent by their father to Jakarta, is that they were all sent to a place they were each unfamiliar with. By seeing these two plots as parallels, the audience is encouraged to step outside of their comfort zones. When you do, you might just discover something new about yourself and the world you live in. ♦

Emir Mahira on Leaving Home and Coming Back

By Christhalia Wiloto