TEAM & PRESS KIT

“As indigenous people who have lived in Kalimantan for thousands of years, growing and breathing here, with our forests and peatlands as part of our identity, do we only want to wait and cry until people from outside Kalimantan come and save us.” – Emmanuela Shinta

Meet The Team

DENISE DRAGIEWICZ

Director & Editor

EMMANUELA SHINTA

Producer

ANASTASIA DITA

Director of Photography

NATALIE SENA

Impact Producer

THOMAS DERENZO

Composer

MARC DRAGIEWICZ

Environmental Consultant/Producer

Shinta interviews Ukaiman,

a rural farmer whose land was overtaken by palm oil companies.

Shinta's international awareness campaign in San Francisco.

Young people of Kalimantan holding a local protest.

"Fantastic and devastating"

Jocelyn Zuckerman,

author Planet Palm

IN THE LAND OF PALM OIL focuses on the casualties, both human and environmental, of palm oil exploitation in Indonesia. The film fuses first-hand accounts of villagers -- victims of land usurpation by large global corporations who pay off local and national officials -- and vérité observations of young Dayak activists who are trying to expose the brutal human rights violations. To establish large-scale palm oil plantations, corporate officers in conjunction with government bureaucrats regularly seize indigenous land, and when Dayak people protest, they are often imprisoned or murdered. The narrative thread of the film centers on Emmanuela Shinta, a rising Dayak activist who sees video and social media exposure as the key to holding her government to account. Acting as an eyewitness to both the civil rights abuses and the environmental degradation, Shinta and her team visit Dayak villagers to record their experiences and ride along with firefighting teams during the dry seasons to expose the tragic consequences of the modern-day palm oil empire in her home province of Central Kalimantan. Through a close collaboration with local people, the film develops and threads this narrative into the reality of the situation there. The film weaves together the many personal narratives of loss with broader observations on current political and social conditions within the Dayak community. In tandem with a quest for answers and accountability, the film constructs a stark portrait of the lasting effects of crony capitalism, now over two decades into the Post-Suharto Reformation.

PEATLAND FIRES

“In 2015, carbon emissions released by peat fires in Kalimantan were equal to smoking 672 cigarettes a day, and I saw our elders, our children, dying.”

--Emmanuela Shinta

This film draws attention to the use of Indonesia’s tropical peatlands, which, when dried out for palm oil production, can become extremely explosive, and, once ignited by fire, will emit heavy smoke as in 2015 when Central Kalimantan was blanketed with a thick haze. According to a joint study from Harvard and Columbia Universities, over 100,000 people died of smoke inhalation in 2015.

HAZE AND POLLUTION

“In 2015, from August to October, the sky was dark. It was so dark with yellow air because of the toxic gas. Everyone was starved of oxygen. There was no way to breathe freely and eyes were barely open. There was nowhere to hide.”

– Emmanuela Shinta

WILDLIFE

The main threat to the survival of orangutan populations in the wild is the massive expansion of palm oil plantations in Borneo and Sumatra.

Palm oil is the leading cause of orangutan extinction. Every year it is estimated that between 1,000 to 5,000 orangutans are killed in Palm Oil concessions.

Both an Environmental and Human Rights Emergency

People often think of rainforest or orangutan habitat loss as the pressing emergency at stake with palm oil spread.

This is also a human’s rights catastrophe with such issues as:

Land-grabbing

Slavery

Forced labor

Child labor

Political corruption

Law enforcement corruption

Human displacement

Toxic environmental conditions

IT'S EVERYWHERE

Today, palm oil is the most widely used vegetable oil in the world. Surging global demand for palm oil has fueled massive forest destruction throughout Indonesia and Malaysia, countries that together account for 85% of the world’s palm oil production.

Palm oil is ubiquitous. Half the packaged food (and other) products found on supermarket shelves now contain palm oil. Palm oil and palm kernel oil are found in all manner of baked goods, such as cookies, bread, and potato chips, as well as in chocolate and milk.

DIRECTOR'S VISION

IN THE LAND OF PALM OIL is a character-driven narrative about a young indigenous journalist navigating the politics of a country that has robbed its people of their basic right to live freely. As she attempts to hold accountable the leadership of her provincial government, we witness her maturing in her own right as a young woman who dares to leaves behind her traditional village to become a tour de force on the stage of international climate activism.

The story presents the seemingly impossible to overcome obstacle of a corrupt government enforcing the illegal act of land confiscation. The intense environmental pollution, the offspring of these immoral acts, seems to only further the despair felt by the villagers. Together these issues present a world torn apart by greed and environmental turmoil.

Nevertheless, the dreary tone of the film is offset by Shinta’s youth and determination, leading to a sense that the climate challenges of the modern world, though seemingly unconquerable, might yet be brought into balance, driven by the will of a resolute generation of young activists. Though tragedy drives the film’s most energized narrative arc, sub-arcs detailing Shinta’s determination to engage global audiences in the heartbreaking story of her own people, create a more optimistic tone.

Hope, therefore, is the thread that holds the narrative together. As Shinta moves the tragedy of land-grabbing to a new arena when she visits India, and we understand the ubiquitous nature of oppression, instead of feeling defeated, the audience is left more with a self- awareness of their own responsibility to participate in both local and global movements that can thwart what is presented as injustice.

The role of an artist is to evoke both an aesthetic and emotional response. I want people to care deeply about both human rights and environmental justice in countries beyond their own and to spur a desire to put pressure on international communities that allow such crimes to go unpunished.