Manuel Alberto Maia (Director), Aghniadi (Producer) | 2025 | 14 min.
2026 Official Selection
How best to preserve the values inherited from generations, when nature and time continue to change? Arubara is a village where life has long moved to the rhythm of the tides. Facing dwindling fish populations and with a vision to restore marine ecosystem diversity, the community decides to close the fishing grounds for several months despite depending on it for their livelihood. Will the gamble pay off?
Manuel Alberto Maia (Abe) started his passion in filmmaking by founding Komunitas Film Kupang in 2012. In 2013, he joined a documentary film workshop for beginners in the Kickstart! In-Docs program. His short documentaries include Kaos Kupang (2013) and Kabar dari Medan (2014). His debut was a feature-length documentary, titled Nokas (2016), which was successfully screened at various national and international festivals, including the Singapore International Film Festival, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Festival Film Dokumenter, and Freedom Film Festival. It also received a nomination for Best Feature-Length Documentary at Festival Film Indonesia 2016.
Additionally, he directed a short fiction film, Siko (2018), which received a nomination for Best Short Film at Festival Film Indonesia 2018. His latest work is a short film titled Uma De Raffa (2022), which was showcased at the Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival 2022.
His next documentary-in-production, To An Ending Unwritten is his second feature-length documentary work.
