

A Film by WIDYA ARAFAH
On the verge of her Ratoh Jaroe dance debut, a passionate female student’s dream to perform is jeopardized when she must prove her irregular period is real after being accused of lying during a school-mandated menstruation raid.

Director's Statement;
My mother told me that as a woman, I need to stand on my own feet. She sent me to the best school my family could afford, for my future. But when I got there, I began to wonder, why do some lessons that teach us to judge other women end up shrinking our own dreams? On my first day in junior high, there was a sex education class. One lesson I still remember was that a woman’s hymen must tear on her wedding night—or her husband could divorce her. This was taught as a warning against premarital sex, said to protect moral and religious values. Instead, it made me easily blame women in many cases, even in situations I later recognized as sexual violence. One such case is the “menstruation raids” that happen in some schools with Islamic values. If a certain number of students are not praying with the excuse of menstruation—Muslim women whose menstruation is prohibited to pray—the students will be raided to prove their menstruation. The methods of raid vary, from touching the feminine area, showing blood in the pad, or asking students to insert tissue into their vaginal area. When I grew up, I realized this was a fallacy in the process of education. Teachers use an instant way to nurture the values of morals and religion, but the method they chose was violating the values themselves. For me, the victims are not only the girls’ bodies and privacy, but also how those values shape the way we dream and imagine our future.


Writer and Director
WIDYA ARAFAH is an Indonesian writer and director. Her background in Anthropology has sharpened her sensitivity in representing human experiences—particularly in portraying how people nurture and grow. She is an alumna of the FLY ASEAN-ROK Film Leaders Incubator 2025 and Layar Indonesiana 2024. Her latest short film, Knight of Blood, international premiered at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. She is currently in post-production Aisha on the Day She Blooms, a short film about women’s bodies and dreams, supported by a grant from the Humanis Foundation and presented at Akatara Film Market, while developing her first feature script through a screenwriter fellowship by Netflix x Soda Machine Films.

TECHNICAL DETAILS
PRODUCTION COUNTRY
LANGUAGES
SUBTITLES
YEAR
RUNTIME
FRAME RATE
ASPECT RATIO
RESOLUTION
SOUND
INDONESIA
INDONESIAN
ENGLISH
2026
14 MINUTES
24FPS
2.35:1
4K
DOLBY 5.1
PRODUCTION GRANT AND MARKET
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Received ‘Gaung Perubahan’ production grant from the Humanis Foundation
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Presented project in the finance pitching forum at Akatara Film Market 2024 by Indonesian Ministry of Tourism
CAST
AISHA
BU MAR
NAYA
KAK LARAS
GWENDOLYNE ACQUANETTA S.
MARYAM SUPRABA
NADINE ADYLA
NEYSA ANANDA
CREW
WRITER & DIRECTOR
PRODUCER
CO-PRODUCER
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
ART DIRECTOR
HEAD OF WARDROBE AND MAKE UP
EDITOR
RATOH JAROE CHOREOGRAPHER
RATOH JAROE MUSIC COMPOSER
MUSIC SCORING
SOUND RECORDIST
SOUND DESIGNER
WIDYA ARAFAH
LALA JASIN & THEA FILISA
RE FAKHRI & WIDYA ARAFAH
PANDYA DEVAPUTRA
SARA DIANI
KHANSA AMILA
CHANDRA DWI ABDURRAHMAN
FATHUR RAHMAN SIHAB
MARSIANUS FERDI
NATHANIA ALEXANDRA
AIR ABHIPRAYA
RISANGGALIH ADITYA