Gojek Winner Announced....

It has already been a week since the announcement was made, but I wanted to make a quick (albeit late) post about our experience at this fun event.

Putra and I picked up Pak Fuad and his wife from their home on the night of the awards, and they were grinning from ear to ear with excitement and nerves to be attending the event with us. It was really so sweet and again I wish that I was fluent in Bahasa to be able to ‘basa basi’ with them as we battled through the traffic for over three hours, with palms sweating and a head full of ‘what ifs’… but hoping we would be returning with some good news at the end of the night.

After a slight panic that we would be late after the road was blocked by police so we were unable to make a u-turn to reach our destination and had to keep driving in frustrating traffic moving at a snails pace, we finally made it right on the starting time noted on our invitation. Ah, when will I ever learn to really relax and learn to be late and live by the Indonesian jam karet (rubber time)?. After six years here, I am rarely ever late to anything, arriving right on time (because I leave HOURS beforehand to calm my anxiety of being late), which means I am nearly always left waiting for hours before events actually start.. Everyone else seems to know the right time to arrive, with no sense of panic… I am still yet to learn how this system works.

So we ate some delicious food, and listened to some great tunes by a gorgeous female DJ while waiting over an hour to enter inside the auditorium. As we finally sat down to listen to the opening speeches, my heart started racing as they showed our film Arang & Asa as a nominee for the Viewer’s Choice Award and then…. yah! The winner was announced….. Gelombang Kehidupan from Tara Arts Movie. I really liked this movie as the Actor was very powerful in making me want to cry and feel sorry for his situation. Then moving quickly along to the Best Director category and again our film was a nominee and the winner was announced… Delivering Happiness! What an epic film this was.. so many people involved and a great movie where the Gojek driver doesn’t even realise he is the hero of the day.

As they came out to announce the final award, I thought to myself… we can’t go home without seeing our film on the big screen… we’re going to see it.. we’re going to see it….. and our film was shown in the nominees.. and then they read out the winner of the Best Video…. ARANG & ASA!!!!! whoooooop whoooop! WE WON!!! Out of 600 entries throughout Indonesia our video was chosen.. what an absolute honour.

I just want to say the biggest thanks ever to our incredible team at Anatman Pictures for making this film as it very nearly didn’t happen as we were running out of time. To my incredibly talented husband who shot yet another beautifully executed film… he will never cease to amaze me… To the awesome team at AlbumRupa for casting Putra’s favourite talents and extras, and getting the incredible Pak Fuad to take part in our film and to him for being so amazing during shooting in the extreme heat and storms in Jakarta. To absolutely everyone involved who believed in us enough to dedicate their time to helping us make this happen. To everyone who showed us support and gave us beautiful words of encouragement after we posted the film online after a mad rush to get it finished by the submission deadline. Finally, the biggest THANK YOU to Gojek, not only for the award, but for the services you have provided to make all our lives easier here in Jakarta and to your drivers who do an incredible job of delivering amazing services while battling the traffic, pollution and chaos of Jakarta.

THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts.

Photos courtesy of Grandyos Zafna Manase Mesah… thanks so much Grandy!