Natasha Tontey

This speculative anthology film navigates the interstitial space between ancestral memory and technologically mediated hallucination. Each episode is anchored within a shared cosmology shaped by Minahasan ritual, Cold War remnants, postcolonial narratives, gendered spectres, and the often paradoxical rhythms of everyday life.

Set in a dystopian future, the film Primate Visions: Macaque Macabre (2024) opens with the fictional character Imago Organella, an experimental primatologist specializing in studying simians, apes and monkeys. Along with their companions, Xenomorphia and Madame Chauffeur, they free two yakis from captivity. Together, they embark on a surreal journey: they gather at a peculiar dinner where they eat a mysterious pudding elixir, visit an experimental biology facility, and explore each other’s subconscious as they traverse a prehistoric cave. Along the way, they celebrate the strange and unpredictable nature of evolution and knowledge, culminating in their return to Minahasa, where they face the reality of freedom.

Guided by the Minahasa’s influence, this speculative fiction of mystical belief interlaces care and ancestral dialogues, embracing a healing renewal across numinous, material and technological realms.

Garden Amidst the Flame is a coming of age story where we guided into the fantasy of a young Minahasan girls in non-linear time structure. The plot of was written after Natasha participated in a Karai ritual. The sublime immaterial experience of digging, taking part, and observing her ancestral culture inspired her to conceived this work. The work explores the psychology of the many fictional characters that appear in the film. They all interact with each other to thinking a new method of speculative care, as an idea to oppose the hypermasculine presentation of Minahasan ritual culture and everyday life.

Based on a popular myth in Minahasa, Indonesia, Wa’anak Witu Watu explores the conception of the goddess Karema who was birthed from a stone as well as the rituals surrounding stone worship today.