Ritz Cinemas

VIC/NSW Premiere

“A fantastically avant garde work of docu-fiction that is fabulously shot and sonically designed.” — Letterboxd user Glenn Dunks

After a genre-bending, form-defying and rule-breaking run of shorts dealing with AI cyborgs, geoengineering and tropical mysticism, rising star Riar Rizaldi makes his feature debut with Monisme.

Mount Merapi, the world’s most active stratovolcano, hangs over the city of Yogyakarta like a ticking time bomb. Many communities and subcultures inhabit the volcano’s ridges and valleys, each with their own conception of Merapi. Gangsters roam the region, thirsty for blood; volcanologists study the earth, hoping to preempt disaster; and miners work in the shafts, just making ends meet.

Riar’s boundary-pushing style reaches new highs in Monisme, taking us to the unexpected nexus of B-horror, hybrid doco, and gangster flick, culminating in an animistic trance freak out, and leaving us asking where the line is between fact and fiction, and between this plane and the next.

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Content warning: This film contains depictions of sexual violence which may be distressing for some people.