Indonesia’s horror business has a new export logic. At the Tokyo Gap-Financing Market, producers unveiled The Land of Jinn, a supernatural horror feature and the first official co-production between Indonesia and Kyrgyzstan.
What the project is
Directed by Kevin Rahardjo, the film follows a young Indonesian woman who travels to Kyrgyzstan searching for a mystical healer to save her unborn child, only to entangle the child’s destiny with the region’s jinn. The screenplay draws on the legend of King Solomon and was written by Makbul Mubarak and Tumpal Tampubolon.
Cameras have already rolled in Kyrgyzstan’s Issyk-Kul region and Jakarta, with dialogue in English, Indonesian and Kyrgyz. The project is now in post-production and is being positioned for a 2027 release. Rahardjo said the frozen Kyrgyz landscape becomes part of the protagonist’s obsession: “beautiful and unforgiving,” and almost indifferent to human desire.
The deal logic
The pitch is less about novelty than arithmetic. Producer Yulia Evina Bhara says Indonesia brings a proven horror market and a 65% local market share, while Kyrgyzstan offers auteur talent, unspoiled scenery and access to Central Asia and Eurasia. “Fear is universal, but ghosts are local,” Bhara said.
It is a useful template for genre financing: pair a market where local films already win with a lower-cost production territory that opens new sales corridors.
- Indonesian side: horror demand, 65% local share, profitable genre model
- Kyrgyz side: locations, auteur talent, Central Asia/Eurasia access
- Immediate goal: close the financing gap and lock pre-sales or a festival route
Why buyers should track it
Producers KawanKawan Media, FreeMinds and Bairak Group are in Tokyo to find financing and distribution partners. Bhara also pointed to a shared cultural grammar: children in both countries grow up hearing warnings about venturing out after sunset prayers, and she noted that Indonesia has “17,000 islands and 17,000 ghosts.”
The delegation includes Nazira C. Noer, CEO of Poplicist and CMO of Navvaros Entertainment, whose firm has handled campaigns for Jumbo, Agak Laen and Ghost in the Cell. That puts a distribution-marketing brain inside the financing conversation.
For distribution and marketing professionals, this matters: a successful pre-sale would signal that Central Asian locations can be packaged into Southeast Asian genre IP, and that horror remains a bridge format across markets with very different audience cultures.
Source: Variety
