The East

The East (original title De Oost), directed by Jim Taihuttu, confronts the Netherlands' role in the 1945 to 1949 Indonesian War of Independence, centering on "Turk" (Marwan Kenzari), a character based on the real and controversial Captain Raymond Westerling. The film opened in the Netherlands on September 25, 2020, and in Indonesia on August 7, 2021. It sparked controversy even before release: the Moluccan veterans' organization Maluku4Maluku filed a police complaint against the filmmakers alleging group defamation, and the film drew strong reactions especially among Indo-European and Moluccan Dutch communities. Martijn Eickhoff, a researcher at Amsterdam's NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, said the film painfully forces the Dutch to confront this period. Who it's for: anyone curious about a Dutch war drama that directly confronts a dark chapter of the country's colonial history, sparking major controversy even before its release. Who it's not for: viewers wanting a comfortable, distanced historical account, since the film puts the audience directly inside an atrocity.