I was also inspired by his idealism: he longed for a precivilization paradise – for original human innocence, you could say. I think we all carry something of that longing in us. But in this modern world, we can no longer tell the difference between what we actually need to live and what we just long for superficially.

The more involved in writing the script we became, the more profound and radical we realized Manser’s story was. Suddenly, we were dealing with a piece of human history.
We understood why the Penan as a people were so important to Manser: as one of the last nomadic communities left living in the jungle, they remind us who we were before humans began to settle on land and accumulate property – the moment we drove ourselves out of paradise.

Since the Penan are still ghting for their land rights and their story continues, it seemed only logical to me to cast actual Penan in the film. But these men and women had no idea what acting or filmmaking was about, and they spoke a language that only they understand. For the casting, I spent three months travelling through remote jungle areas and shot more than 400 screen tests with various Penan.

As the name Manser is still taboo in Malaysia today, we had to gain the trust of the Penan and convince them to leave their families for months to come live and shoot with us in Borneo’s Indonesian territory of Kalimantan. It was equally difficult to convince the timber companies that controlled the shooting locations to grant us permission to film, and to set up an infrastructure in the jungle necessary for such a film production.

My aim was to make a film that was both contemporary and classic; traditional in its narrative style, yet modern in the way it provides the viewers with food for thought and forces them to engage. For the visual design, I was inspired by romanticism – by epic landscapes and emotional music. Manser was a romantic at heart, and I hope the film reflects a part of his soul.

Niklaus Hilber
Writer & Director