The Promise, which opened this year’s Movies That Matter Film Festival and played at Doc Edge Festival, is a memory and celebration of indigenous cultures as well as a rising cry against colonial profits that are still far too relevant and present in the world today.
This Dutch funded documentary begins with an ominous title card: There are always four sides to a story. Your version. Their version. The truth. And what really happened. The film is equally divided into four parts that deliver the foreground, the background and the consequences of the Dutch colonisation of an awe-inspiring part of Indonesia.
The story begins in a positive atmosphere. The acceptance of the Dutch colonialists by West Papuans is instinctive and naïve. The Papuans seem happy to make the best of any situation including the exploitation of the Dutch colonists in exchange for education and simple commodities. However, the real struggle that gives the documentary its name is the promised independence in the 60s.
Although the UN and the US were involved in the negotiations, backroom deals and mouthwatering profit brought along an unexpected outcome for Papuans. As the Papuan region was incorporated into the state of Indonesia, their sacred mountain was turned into the second largest copper and gold mine in the world.
The Papuan history and struggle have yet to be recorded, announces Gerardus Thommey, West Papuan liberation fighter. This is what Director Daan Veldhuizen is attempting to do in The Promise. The fact that their former white coloniser’s descended is needed to tell their story is not lost on his interviewees.
Veldhuizen interlaces his film with archival footage of Dutch explorers, images of Papuan breathtaking nature and distressed accounts of West Papuan exiles. Their wound is deeper than being sold out for capitalist interests in the past. Theirs is the continuing struggle for dignity and autonomy underneath the Indonesian rule.
The Promise is an enlightening rumination on the tribe of “primitives – cannibals – savages” who joined the globalising, modern world with curiosity and ended up in one of the worst genocides of present day with more than 500,000 West Papuans reported killed to this day. This being another damning proof of the disappointing results of United Nations’ mediation akin to their more publicised failures in Rwanda or Srebrenica.
Overall, The Promise serves in informative purpose of making the plight of West Papuans known. Veldhuzien’s speakers are lovable and well-spoken, his archival choices help visualise moments in Papuan history and his message is unintrusive and clear. But without a humane resolution, it is yet another badge of compassion for the woke Western world.
Doc Edge Festival is celebrating 20 years of “Life Unscripted” from 25 June to 13 July 2025 in Auckland. Revisit our on-site coverage of last year’s edition here.
