CONG/SPIRACY reclaims cong—a weaponised Indonesian slur once hurled at queer bodies—and twists it into a tactic: a whispered code, a conspiratorial language shared by those surviving in the shadows of normativity. Across Southeast Asia, queer life is often framed by authorities as inherently conspiratorial: corrupting morality, spreading propaganda, destabilising “family values.”

This programme embraces that accusation and turns it inside out. Here, conspiracy becomes a creative method of queer world-building. The works gathered here do not seek permission or recognition. Instead, they plot in plain sight through camp, haunting, ritual, satire, and speculative fabulation. Refusing the role of polite explanation, they conjure aesthetic strategies for survival: seduction, distortion, mythic inheritance, glitch, laughter, and the everyday spellwork of living otherwise.

 

Basri & Salma in a Never-Ending Comedy – dir. Khozy Rizal | Indonesia, US | 2023 | 15min 
A couple working in a carnival are forced to confront the painful truth behind their childlessness.

Ghariban – dir. Angelissa Melissa | Indonesia | 2025 | 4mins 
The gender-transitioning legend of Nyi Mas Gandasari guides a reckoning with history and violence.

Lampiran Cyclofemmes – dir. Ishvara Devati | Indonesia | 2025 | 15mins
Through drag, soap-opera archives, and queer camp, the film reimagines Mak Lampir as a mystical trans icon of unruly love and resistance. 

NGGAK!!! – dir. Oktania Hamdani, Winner Wijaya | Indonesia | 2024 | 8mins
Sekar is planning a wedding in an online game with her girlfriend when she suddenly receives a call from her mother.

Of Other Tomorrows Never Known – dir. Natasha Tontey | Indonesia, Germany | 2023 | 16mins 
Guided by the Minahasa’s influence, this speculative fiction interlaces care and ancestral dialogues.

The Overwoman – dir. Ari Angkasa | Indonesia, Australia | 2023 | 8mins
Reimagining the femme fatale, this film transforms Nietzsche’s Übermensch into a trans-diasporic figure.

Content note: contains scenes of domestic violence, homophobia, and transphobia.

 

This screening will be followed by an interactive panel where panelists and audience members conspire together to discuss camp, codes, and queer “conspiracies” in Southeast Asia. 

Curated by Rizky Rahad, as part of QAMERAD.

As part of Queer East 2026, a cross-disciplinary festival that showcases boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ cinema, live arts, and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities.

 

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