Mbah Jhiwo

Yono, or Mbah Jhiwo (ancient soul), as he calls himself, is one of the miners who daily carry around 70 kilos of sulfur up the steep slopes of Kawa Ijen’s crater. He spends the rest of his time in the small village of Bulu Sari, where he lives with his family and takes care of his cattle. Yono is also a devote practitioner of Islam, regularly does black magic spells ans invests in cryptocurrencies and other financial assets. So do many others in Java isalnd eastern end.

One day his wife, for no apparent reason, leaves the family home and drastically alters a routine where time seemed to be suspended. Yono enters a time spiral where events repeat themselves, though mutating their appearance, as his beliefs move from animism, to Islam ans capitalism. In a hybridization between ethnofiction and documentary, Mbah Jhiwo questions the myth of progress and explores the relation with the otherness in the neocolonial reality of the islands of the South Seas.