Surya's Ghost-Seer Bride Drama Debuts at Busan Market — SkimNews
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- Mouly Surya's "The Wife Who Can See Dead People (Or Jinn)" is being presented at the Asian Project Market during Busan International Film Festival; the drama follows 20-year-old Gadis, a bride who sees ghosts, joining a polygamous Muslim household as the fourth wife of 50-year-old Abi.
- Gadis bonds with Indah, Abi's 35-year-old third wife and mother of 7-year-old Firman; when the boy disappears, Gadis and a "motley band of ghosts" help search, and Firman's body is found by a river, splitting the wives between their grief and their husband's Islamic tradition.
- Surya says the subject is personal — her immediate family has multiple wives and a close friend claims to see ghosts — and frames Indonesia as a nation of contradictions: the world's largest Muslim population without an Islamic state, widespread ghost belief absent from the Quran, and polygamy permitted by scripture but unrecognized by law.
- Producers Gita Fara and Rama Adi describe the project as mid-development with a first-draft screenplay complete; in Busan they are seeking co-production partners and international sales for what they call a "more intimate and grown-up" drama that preserves Surya's "visceral style."
- The producers say they want to portray polygamy "beyond prejudices," centering Abi — who works overseas to provide for the family — as a man genuinely trying to treat each wife equally, while capturing the "camaraderie, rivalry and sisterhood" that emerges between the women.
Why it matters: Surya is pitching a project rooted in her own polygamous family experience to one of Asia's key film marketplaces at the financing stage, explicitly seeking co-production partners. The producers' stated goal to frame polygamy "beyond prejudices" — from inside the household rather than as outside critique — distinguishes this from typical screen treatments of the practice.
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