Indonesia in 1991, gripped by a dictatorship already decades old, with no end in sight. Laut (Reza Rahadian), a university student who devours everything from the classics to banned books, steps into a discussion group led by Kinan (Dian Sastrowardoyo) and begins to awaken to state violence and the injustices in society. Inspired by the pro-democracy movements in South Korea and the Philippines, he throws himself into the student movement. Leaving behind the comforts of a middle-class home, he dreams of becoming an intellectual of action and chooses a resistance that could cost him his life. But as the net of surveillance tightens, his comrades are arrested one by one, and Laut, in hiding, is seized by plainclothes police and disappears. The family left behind refuses to let go of truth and hope even under a menacing climate of fear, while the survivors are left to wander in agonizing guilt and doubt over having been spared. Adapted from the 2017 bestselling novel by acclaimed Indonesian author Leila S. Chudori, The Sea Speaks His Name vividly captures the tragedy of the victims of enforced disappearances in the 1990s and the indelible trauma left behind. Director Yosep Anggi Noen has built a singular cinematic world since his 2012 debut Peculiar Vacation and Other Illnesses. After Solo, Solitude (2016) he once again turns his lens to an individual’s fate and sacrifice caught in history’s whirlwind, affirming once more his weighty sense of duty to his era as a cineaste. (PARK Sungho)