Voyage to Terengganu

Terengganu was the only one of the thirteen Malaysian states which filmmaker/writer Amir Muhammad had never visited. And so he decided, together with his locally raised colleague Badrul Hisham Ismail, to shoot a film there. As a basis for their impressionist, occasionally even surrealist documentary, they used the book Voyage to Kelantan (1838) by Munshi Abdullah (1796-1854). This controversial writer only spent one day in the Sultanate of Terengganu, but that was nevertheless enough for a furious tale about the local population, and especially the men. They were alleged to be lazy and violent.
Voyage to Terengganu contrasts Abdullah’s statements with the everyday reality of today. Disregarding the state’s natural and architectural beauty, Muhammed and Ismail train their camera on several local men, who in brief interviews talk open-heartedly about their culture, their faith, their worries about financial security and the privileges of being a man.

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