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Indonesia’s film agency is helping draft a revised Film Law that would reshape its powers, while Jakarta, where Netflix now has four titles in production, is working to become a regional film hub.
Fauzan Zidni, chair
of the Indonesian Film Agency (BPI), tells Variety the first draft, prepared with the Ministry of Culture, has taken shape since Cannes. “It is still in discussion, and I will say more when the moment is right, but the direction is right and the momentum is there,” he says.
The Jakarta Film Commission launched in June alongside Filming in Jakarta, a one-stop service for producers. Karno says production companies from Malaysia and India have since come to the city to shoot films and series.
In the capital, Netflix’s latest slate follows “Tygo,” the streamer’s “Extraction” spinoff. “We’re very happy to say that Netflix now is doing [four] titles … through Filming in Jakarta,” says Vice Governor Rano Karno. Under a memorandum of understanding tied to the inaugural Jakarta Film Summit, Netflix will also help develop local film talent, he adds.
Governor Pramono Anung has set the goal of making Jakarta a film hub on the scale of Busan, and Karno, a veteran actor and filmmaker, has driven much of the city’s film policy. Over the next five years, he says, Jakarta wants to settle the full ecosystem, from production through financing and market access, and build Busan-style infrastructure. Post-production facilities, soundstages and studios are the biggest gaps, which the city aims to fill within three to five years.
Jakarta has cut certain location fees by 50% and introduced a 50% tax concession on cinema admissions for qualifying Indonesian films. Karno says the city has barely scratched the surface on production incentives and is working to improve them, learning from Thailand and Malaysia as it tries to grow the industry faster.
Busan has been a close partner. Karno credits the Busan Film Commission with helping the Jakarta Film Commission become an official member of AFCNet, the Asian Film Commissions Network. “It’s a momentum for us to be known [as the] future film hub in the region,” he says.
To spread the benefits beyond the capital, the city is working with Bank Indonesia’s Jakarta representative office on the film and creative economy sectors, and is inviting filmmakers and industry players to its film summit and festival. Its Jaksinema initiative, which brings cinemas into public markets, offers cheaper tickets aimed at lower- and middle-income audiences.
Karno, who says he has spent more than 50 years understanding the industry’s problems, expects the summit to become an essential date on the calendar, with the city government fully committed to making Jakarta a City of Cinema.
The summit will also take on what Zidni sees as the core barrier to institutional investment. Banks lend against physical assets such as land, buildings and machinery, which production houses can’t offer. Film IP, including copyright and broadcast and distribution rights, has no valuation method that banks or the Financial Services Authority (OJK) will accept.
Government Regulation No. 24 of 2022 on the Creative Economy already allows for IP-based financing. What’s missing are technical guidelines from OJK and a revision of OJK Regulation No. 40 of 2019 on asset quality so that IP can formally count as collateral. The summit is bringing OJK, the Ministry of Creative Economy, the Directorate General of Intellectual Property (DJKI), banks and the Indonesian Appraisers Association together to agree on a standard IP valuation method, a pilot financing scheme and a regulatory path.
At the national level, Indonesia has no equivalent of France’s CNC, Korea’s KOFIC or Singapore’s IMDA. BPI can convene, advocate and coordinate, but it cannot fund films on its own or mandate policy. Zidni wants the revised law to give the agency statutory authority and ring-fenced funding.
Two ministries currently oversee film in Indonesia, and Zidni says BPI is not trying to replace either of them. “That coordination problem is as much political as it is institutional, and solving it is part of the work,” he says. He calls the Minister of Culture’s support the strongest it has been in years, but gives no date for getting the law through parliament.
Local productions took roughly 67% of Indonesia’s box office last year, though Zidni says 2026 is tracking at slower growth amid global economic pressures. “What we have not built is the bridge that carries those stories outward,” he says.
At the Lumière Summit, Indonesia’s Ministry of Culture announced a new international co-production fund, developed with CNC support and open to filmmakers worldwide working with Indonesian partners. It sits alongside a matching fund, under which the government contributes up to a set ceiling per project for producers who land international financing. Zidni concedes that the matching fund on its own won’t help independent producers who lack overseas contacts.
“What it does is create a concrete incentive to invest in building those relationships, the payoff is now tangible and government-backed, not hypothetical,” he says.
Indonesia signed its first audiovisual co-production agreement, with the Netherlands, at JAFF Market in 2024. Talks on a bilateral treaty with France are active. Korean producers are looking hard at Southeast Asia, and Zidni calls Indonesia the obvious partner by scale, though he can’t give a precise timeline. “We are no longer asking partners to believe in our intentions,” he says.
Zidni, who previously worked at Disney, watched global streamers pull back from Southeast Asian originals after 2023. “A platform can change its content strategy, exit a market, or deprioritize Indonesian content, and we have no recourse,” he says. BPI is pushing for closer ties with international sales agents and regional distribution within Southeast Asia, and is exploring whether Indonesian producers can build a shared market presence.
Talent is another pressure point. Indonesia’s film schools, spread across 27 campuses, turn out around 1,200 graduates a year, but most are not absorbed by the industry and turnover runs at about 60%, Zidni says.
His mandate runs to 2030. By then, he wants at least two bilateral co-production treaties in force, a financing system with a track record, and Indonesian producers attending the major international markets as regulars.
“When the system works routinely, not heroically, that is when I will know we have built something that lasts,” he says.
