Les Enfants du Gunung
Jean-Claude Riga, David Jallil
1999 - 53 min - Super 16 mm & Betacam SP - Couleur - Belgique

Gunung is the highest volcano in Bali. The mountain people of Gunung live almost in state of autarchy.
Less than 10 years ago, a beggar woman, accompanied by her children, crossed the 100 kilometres of ricefields that separate the mountain from the city. Since then,, other children have been making the round trip...
The contact between city and mountains is felt today through the child prostitutes who travel back and forth between these two worlds. From time to time, a Western paedophile accompanies a child to the mountain...
This film is an approach to the mountain community of Pedehan. During our different stays there, we met several children. Mariani – 11 years old – who pays her school fees by working as a prostitute at night and who hopes, her heart filled with anger, to escape by charter one day to Germany or Australia. Appel and Kasir, who "came back" and want to live together on the mountain, until the day they are married, also the day of the arrival of our guide, who killed an adult from his village at the age of 14...
That was how long it took to adopt a different approach to the problem of the children of Gunung.