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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

  • Received ‘Gaung Perubahan’ production grant from the Humanis Foundation

  • 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

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