West Papua Mini Film Festival

Calling all film lovers and lovers of truth and justice: Please join us in supporting the 2024 West Papua Mini Film Festival!

In late 2023, independent West Papuan media company Jubi TV, under the supervision of audio-visual production house WatchDoc, released five original documentary films that seek to promote peace, justice, and education, as well as the prevention of harm to thousands of internally displaced persons and refugees in Papua.

These films tell stories about positive resistance, struggles for social justice, and fights against environmental destruction through through the lenses of hip-hop, football and emotional family drama, all documented by on the ground activist filmmakers.

In April 2024 the five films make their Australian national premier beginning at the University of Wollongong on April 9, then in Sydney (April 10), Canberra (April 11), Adelaide (April 13), Meanjin/Brisbane (April 14), Lismore (April 15), Naarm/Melbourne (April 19), Darwin (April 21). As part of the festival, six people involved in the films are flying to Australia from West Papua and Indonesia to participate in Q&A’s and to publicise their situation and lend support to activists in West Papua as they struggle for basic human rights and land rights..

The five documentary films to be premiered are:

Your Help is Needed!

We are seeking your help to raise money to help cover the costs of venue hire, ground transport, accommodation and catering as the festival makes its way across the continent. These films and the festival are the product of the effort of grass roots organisers and organisations with limited to no financial support. All funds raised will go towards the festival, and if the target is exceeded, any additional funds will be used to support refugees and internally displaced persons in West Papua who are facing innumerable challenges that threaten their lives.

About Jubi TV and WatchDoc

Jubi TV is an independent media platform, and its online news portal is known for consistently presenting the public with factual reports on human rights violations in Papua. Its co-founder and senior journalist Victor Mambor has been praised by the UN Human Rights Council as a humanitarian and a human rights activist. Victor Mambor has fount that that the risks of his journalistic work are growing exponentially as the Jubi network expands. IN 2023, an improvised explosive device was detonated outside of his home. The blast has been described as a “terror” attack as a warning over his journalism.

Watchdoc was founded by independent and progressive film-makers Andhy Panca Kurniawan and Dandhy Dwi Laksono in 2009. In 2021 it won the Ramon Magsaysay Award in the 'Emergent Leadership' category. Dandhy Dwi Laksono directed the 2024 documentary film Dirty Vote about the 2024 Indonesian election which featured several legal academics and "explained how the instruments of state power has been used to win the election, even as it impacts and damages the democratic order".