AFTER the excitement of starring in a movie, Penan land rights activist Nick Kelesau wonders if the film will ever be screened in Malaysia.

This is because the movie will be about the life and times of celebrated Swiss environmentalist Bruno Manser, who lived among the Penan and took up their cause against deforestation. Manser disappeared on his last journey to Sarawak in 2000.

Kelesau, 53, from Long Kevong in Mulu where Manser spent a lot of his time, plays Along Sega, the Penan headman in Upper Limbang who became Manser’s mentor, trusted friend, translator, and guide.

The movie, a production of A Film of Zurich starring Swiss actor Sven Schelker in the lead role, was shot in January last year in the forests of Melinau in Kalimantan, where the crew spent three months filming.

Other locations were New York and Switzerland.

“I don’t think we would have gotten a permit to shoot the movie on location in Sarawak,” Kelesau told The Malaysian Insight when met at a forum on clean energy in Kuching recently.

Manser had helped the Penans organise blockades to protect their native customary rights land against encroachment by timber companies from 1984 to 1990.

It made the Swiss activist persona non grata and a target of the state.

The Penans are the last of Sarawak’s most untouched ethnic tribe. A handful are still nomadic and the forests they call home are shrinking due to logging activities.

Logging has also contaminated rivers and sources of drinking water, and reduced the wildlife they hunt for food. It has also desecrated their graves and heritage sites.

Apart from Kelesau, eleven young Penan men were cast in various roles in the Velentin Greutert-produced movie.

Lukas Strauman, the executive director of the Bruno Manser Fund civil society group, said the two-hour film will premiere in Switzerland on November 7.

He would not provide the name of the film, saying it was still under wraps, but a search online reveals that the title will be Paradise War.

Straumann, who was also in Kuching for the clean energy forum, said he was informed that production was completed.

Straumann is the author of the 2014 book Money Logging: On the Trail of the Asian Timber Mafia, in which he alleged that former Sarawak chief minister Taib Abdul Mahmud and his family had amassed a fortune of US$15 billion (RM61.4 billion) through the corrupt distribution of logging licences in Sarawak.

“I don’t know if the movie will ever be screened in Sarawak. It would probably never get past the censor board,” Straumann quipped.

Manser was Enemy Number One to Taib at the time, who had then placed the Swiss on the state’s immigration blacklist, banning him from the state.

Manser was reportedly trying to make his way back out of Sarawak illegally by crossing the border with Kalimantan when he disappeared.

His disappearance spawned a host of conspiracy theories, elevating Manser to mythical status.

While living with the Penan, Manser reportedly learned jungle survival skills and adopted their language and culture, including dressing in a loincloth and sporting the bowl-shaped Penan haircut. – March 17, 2019.