The Seen and Unseen

Tantri and her twin brother Tantra are inseparable. When they steal eggs in secret from the family’s offering, the white is always Tantri’s and the yolk is Tantra’s. One day the yolk is missing, and so is Tantra; the boy is gravely ill in hospital. Tantri then begins to slip into magical worlds alongside this one, approaching the parting that is coming through costumes, through paint on her body and through dance. In one scene her mother washes the paint from her face; it is like gently wiping away the illusion that things can stay as they are. The film does not explain a child’s grief; it shows it from inside the Balinese distinction between the seen and the unseen. The language of the account is not speech but movement and colour. Kamila Andini’s eighty six minute Indonesian film was completed in 2018.