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JOHN & DEWI

By Mike MCDOUGALL

Family - Pre-Production 2024

A story of a forbidden young love across a cultural and social divide – a love so strong that no barrier can block it - which uncovers a dark family secret haunting three generations, undoes nearly two decades of suffering, reunites a couple, and saves a marriage... but at a price.

- Year of production
- 2024
- Genres
- Family
- Countries
- INDONESIA
- Languages
- ENGLISH, INDONESIAN
- Budget
- 0.3 - 0.6 M$
- Duration
- 97 mn
- Director(s)
- Mike MCDOUGALL
- Writer(s)
- Mike MCDOUGALL
- Producer(s)
- Jessy CHANDRA (Vagabond Solusi)
- Synopsis
- Orphaned, eighteen year old, half Balinese John is on an weekend break in traditional Tabanan with his adoptive, white, English father, Erik and stepmother, Claire. John meets pretty, smart, adorable, eighteen year old Balinese girl, Dewi but influenced by his discriminatory dad, John is initially reluctant to befriend her. Her warm, open charm wins him over though - they soon become close, spending all possible time together, and fall deeply in love.
  
  To the dismay of John’s parents – and Erik’s widowed mother, Katrina who’s suffering from erratic dementia and hiding a big family secret - John discusses withdrawing his applications to UK universities to study closer to Dewi instead. Erik terminates the holiday and takes the family home, hoping to nip the romance in the bud, painting John a picture of conniving, money hungry, manipulative local Bali girls trying to trap Europeans into marriage by getting pregnant. When John accepts what his father tells him, Dewi, humiliated and heart broken, flees home on her motorbike, not paying proper attention to the road…
  
  Erik then spends a few days away overseeing a factory refurbishment, leaving Claire and John to complete his UK university applications. One night, overcome with remorse and shame, John whispers that he would do anything if only he could see Dewi again, apologise for betraying her and tell her how he feels about her. Dewi visits him and John promises never to fail her again, tells her how much he loves her and the couple are reunited.
  
  To complete John’s university applications requires copies of his adoption papers which they find in Eric’s study accompanied, by another document: John’s birth certificate which lists Erik as John’s real, biological father and predates the adoption paperwork by three years. What’s going on? The young lovers begin to investigate and discover that even Erik doesn’t know the truth about John’s birth mother who did not die in childbirth as they’d been told…