Dear film festival observers, this movie is the best movie to be screened in film festivals because it shows up the meaning of being a child, the humanity behind Balinese culture and tradition, the meaningful scenes of expressions of having a serious disease, and what is the point of having traditional family to face the signs of spirituality. This movie has strong characters of the actors, the very professional cinematographer, and genuine main story that leads us to question ourselves to believe in 2 parts in this world, the seen and the unseen; "Sekala Niskala" in Balinese language.
As an Indonesian, I am really proud to share this movie for my fellow film makers around the world, because it has the rich of Balinese culture and tradition, especially how Balinese people really takes deep attention and high appreciation to their unseen gods, to give gifts and lives to their seen things, for example here many scenes about rice field and foods.
If you go to Bali, you can see that Balinese people gives many offerings to their gods everyday and each day has unique representation of meaning, that sometimes tourists still don't understand completely. What the guide said is sometimes not so clear and not so philosophical explained.
Here in the Sekala Niskala movie, for me this movie is the representative movie of daily life in the mind of Balinese children, how they must preserve the tradition despite of the reality that life is so hard and each family must raise up each other to follow the ancestors rule.
I give 7 stars for this movie, it would be more than 7 if the story has some social critique of The Seen and The Unseen in the context of social life, for example here the brother has some serious disease, so it could be better if there were plots related to poverty and how government of Bali, that is so religious (The Unseen), can give real help to the poor people of Bali (The Seen).
So for me the Sekala Niskala meaning is not just ghost or spirit around the real people, but the gap between religiousity and policy. But still, this movie deserves many film festival awards ahead. Congratulation!!
