‘Mencari Ibu’

It all started in mid 2020. I was so moved by Widya Astuti Boerma's letter for her biological mother she's looking for and her peculiar adoption from Indonesia to the Netherlands. 

The whole process of her adoption - falsified birth paper and adoption documents - and the meeting with false mother in 1991 might indicates that she was involved in dodgy adoption, which makes her think that she was a victim of child trafficking. 

Her story is not a unique case, during 70s to early 80s, at least 3,000 Indonesian children adopted to the Netherlands, many of them with false documents. 

Also, from what was written in her letter to her mother, she has vivid childhood memories. I then pursued her to follow her journey when she decided to visit Indonesia in mid 2021 to meet two potential biological mothers and to revisit places from her childhood memories. 

That's when I teamed up with video journalist Dwiki Marta to make a documentary piece on her story. 

This documentary was nominated in Indonesian Film Festival (FFI) 2022 for Best Documentary category.

Read the article about this story here and my personal story here.