Pesta Babi, a 95-minute documentary is shaking Indonesia’s government, military, and corporate elite — and it’s about pigs.
A documentary about pigs, land, and power is doing what decades of diplomatic reports failed to achieve: forcing Indonesia to confront what is happening in its easternmost frontier. Pesta Babi: Kolonialisme di Zaman Kita — or Pig Feast: Colonialism in Our Time — is a 95-minute investigative film directed by Cypri Paju Dale and Dandhy Dwi Laksono, released in April 2026. It is now one of the most talked-about and suppressed documentaries in Southeast Asian history. Since its limited release, it has been screened in over 2,000 registered locations. Yet it has also been forcibly shut down at universities, disrupted by military personnel, and dismissed by government officials as “unbalanced.” The film, produced by WatchDoc alongside environmental and legal advocacy groups, does not simply document deforestation. It maps a power structure — one that connects national strategic projects, oligarchs, palm oil conglomerates, and the Indonesian military into a single, self-reinforcing machine.
Papua is Indonesia’s largest and most resource-rich province, long at the center of territorial disputes, human rights concerns, and underdevelopment. Under President Prabowo Subianto’s administration, the government designated large-scale agricultural and energy projects in South Papua as National Strategic Projects (PSN). These include food estates for rice and cassava, sugarcane plantations for bioethanol, and palm oil expansion — all positioned under the slogans of “food security” and “energy transition.” The affected areas, primarily around Merauke, Boven Digoel, and Mappi, are home to indigenous communities including the Marind, Awyu, Yei, and Muyu peoples, whose ancestral forests and rivers are directly in the path of these projects. It is within this context that Pesta Babi was made — and why it hit so hard.
The Ships, the Excavators, and the Signs on the Land
The film opens with a striking scene. Yasinta Moiwend, a Marind Anim woman from Merauke, describes the morning a massive ship docked at her village pier. It carried hundreds of excavators, escorted by military forces, heading inland for a National Strategic Project. Not far away, Vincen Kwipalo from the Yei community found his clan’s land had been marked with a sign reading: “Property of the Indonesian Army.” He had not been consulted. He had not been compensated. He simply woke up one day and his ancestral forest had been designated military territory — at the same moment a sugarcane company was encroaching on the same land.
These are not isolated anecdotes. The film argues they are symptoms of a coordinated system in which state power and corporate interest converge in Papua’s forests without meaningful consent from the people who have lived there for generations.
2.5 Million Hectares and the Oligarchs Behind Them
The scale of what Pesta Babi documents is staggering. According to the film, up to 2.5 million hectares of Papua’s forests could be converted into industrial plantations under projects promoted in the name of food and energy security.
Satellite imagery cited by Mongabay in November 2025 showed that roughly 17,000 hectares — approximately half of the first sugarcane concession alone — had already been cleared. The documentary traces the corporate ownership networks behind these projects, linking elite business circles and palm oil conglomerates to the national program.
One of the key figures identified in related reporting is Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad, a businessman who has expanded welfare and infrastructure assistance in villages surrounding the food estate areas — a practice critics describe as co-opting local consent.
Meanwhile, PT Agrinas Pangan Nusantara, a state-connected entity, has been pursuing targets of 425,000 hectares of food estates across Papua, Kalimantan, and South Sumatra. The financial architecture behind it, according to Indonesia analyst Kevin O’Rourke speaking to Mongabay, may already be straining under the weight of competing national budget demands.
The Military in the Screening Room
What gave Pesta Babi its political charge was not just its content, but how the state responded to it. Since its April 2026 release, at least 21 incidents of disrupted screenings were documented by a coalition of 10 civil society organizations. Screenings were shut down at Mataram University in Lombok, reportedly by university authorities themselves. A public event in Fort Oranje, North Moluccas, was broken up by local security forces.
A Jesuit priest in Yogyakarta confirmed that a planned screening was cancelled under pressure from authorities. The Indonesian Army (TNI) issued public warnings that the film contained “unbalanced narratives” about Papua, and Colonel Tri Purwanto, spokesperson for the XVII/Cenderawasih Military District Command, stated that films screened publicly must comply with Indonesian censorship laws. Despite this, Law and Human Rights Minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra denied that the government had issued any formal ban, attributing the disruptions to “administrative procedures” at individual campuses. For many observers, this explanation did not hold.
A Witness Walks Back, a Nation Debates
The controversy deepened in May 2026 when Yasinta Moiwend — the Marind Anim woman whose story opens the film — publicly distanced herself from Pesta Babi. In videos widely circulated on social media between May 20 and May 23, she said she felt “misled” during filming and that her words had not been presented as she intended. “I support development in Merauke,” she said. “We want our children to have a better future.” Her statements were quickly amplified by media outlets and government-aligned voices as evidence of the documentary’s alleged bias. But the retraction itself deepened the debate.
Was Mama Sinta’s change of position a genuine clarification — or the result of social and institutional pressure in a region where the military’s presence is heavy? Critics of the film and its supporters found themselves unable to agree on even the basic facts of her testimony. Director Dandhy Laksono and co-director Cypri Paju Dale maintained that “colonialism,” as a framework, was an analytical necessity to explain interconnected issues in Papua: “Colonialism, as a framework of thought or analysis, succeeds in bringing all of these problems together,” Cypri said.
1,800 Crosses and a Feast No One Was Invited To
Perhaps the most haunting detail in Pesta Babi is this: across South Papua, communities have erected at least 1,800 crosses and traditional barricades to block companies and military forces from entering their ancestral lands — both physically and spiritually. These crosses mark boundaries. They mark graves. They mark forests that indigenous communities have depended on for centuries for food, ritual, and identity.
The film’s title itself is a reference to the pig feast, a central cultural ceremony among Papuan indigenous groups, a communal act of belonging and abundance. The documentary’s implicit argument is that there is a feast happening in Papua — but it is being held by others, at the expense of those whose land and culture make it possible.
On May 9, 2026, alone, the documentary was screened simultaneously in 109 locations across Indonesia. More than 2,000 communities had registered to host screenings. For a country where civil society space has been under sustained pressure, that scale of public engagement was itself a form of protest.
What This Means: Beyond Papua, Beyond Indonesia
The Pesta Babi controversy carries clear implications for Southeast Asia and anyone watching Indonesia from the outside. For the region, it is a reminder that the green transition — bioethanol, biodiesel, “energy security” — is not automatically progressive. When it is built on dispossessed indigenous land, enforced by military power, and shielded from public scrutiny, it reproduces the same colonial logic it claims to replace. Indonesia is not alone in this pattern. Across the Mekong, in Myanmar’s Sagaing region, in parts of the Philippines and Malaysia, resource extraction framed as national development has repeatedly displaced communities with minimal legal recourse.
For international observers, the film’s reception tells a story about the state of democratic space in Indonesia under Prabowo. The disruption of 21 documented screenings, the military’s public warnings against the film, and the government’s awkward denial of any coordinated ban — all of it points to a political environment where accountability is becoming harder to sustain. Dandhy Laksono’s previous films — Sexy Killers (2019) on the coal industry, and Dirty Vote (2024) on the presidential election — faced similar resistance. The pattern is consistent.
For investors, development banks, and multilateral institutions funding Indonesia’s food and energy transition, Pesta Babi raises a question that cannot be ignored: whose food security, exactly, is being secured? The conversion of 2.5 million hectares of indigenous Papuan forest into industrial plantations — with military escorts, disrupted dissent, and corporate concessions worth billions — is not a footnote. It is the story. As Indonesia positions itself as a rising middle power and a key partner in Southeast Asia’s green economy, the world is watching whether it can reconcile that ambition with what is happening on the ground in Merauke. To read more news and editorials, visit our page for the latest updates and insights.
Sources:
[1] Pesta Babi – Colonialism in our time, by Dandhy Laksono: NoBar and Q&A with the filmmaker
[2] Documentary on Papua deforestation sparks controversy after disrupted screenings in Indonesia
[3] With military backing and oligarch allies, Indonesia pushes controversial food estate
[4] “Pesta Babi”: The film on the exploitation of Papua that Prabowo wants to ban
[5] Papua documentary crackdown sparks fears over free speech, military overreach
[6] Govt denies ordering shutdowns of Papua documentary screenings
[7] Documentary Film Pesta Babi: Merauke Food Estate Faces Activism and Reality
[8] Indonesia Says ‘Pesta Babi’ Screenings Were Never Banned
[9] Film Pesta Babi Exposes Papua’s Hidden Wounds
Keywords: Pesta Babi, Papua Food Estate, Pesta Babi Documentary, Indonesia Deforestation, Indigenous Papuan Rights, Dandhy Laksono Film, Merauke Land Grab, Prabowo Food Security, WatchDoc Indonesia, Papua Military Presence, National Strategic Project Papua
