MARLINA
THE MURDERER
IN FOUR ACTS

 a film by mouly surya

Production grant - spring 2017

Marlina is a grieving woman, hard at work all year long to save enough money for the traditional Sumba burial of her late husband, who now sits as a mummy in the living room. Markus knocks on her door and informs her that his gang intends to rob her in half an hour; a promise well kept. Marlina poisons the robbers and seduces Markus. During sex, she beheads him and starts a journey with Markus’s bloodied head inside a plastic bag. When the next house in West Sumba is ten to twenty kilometers away, the journey is more metaphorical than real. A headless Markus haunts her every step of the way. A little girl reminds her of her unborn little boy, they even have the same name. A pregnant friend, Novi, helps her then betrays her whilst no police believe her rape story. Marlina keeps fighting her way from kitchen to bedroom, all the way to the bus and the birth of a child, and finally, behind bars.