About

Ucu Agustin is a writer, was a journalist, and documentary filmmaker now based in Washington D.C, USA, and Jakarta, Indonesia. Over ten years, Ucu has made dozens of well known documentaries in Indonesia and consistently making film about women and democracy, exploring injustices perpetrated against society’s weakest members, and how they fight back: from victims of medical malpractice in Conspiracy of Silence (2010, 78 min), to women driven into illegal prostitution by poverty in Ragat’e Anak/Fortune for My Children (2008, 26 min), and journalists fighting for their right to unionize and to report news according their own moral compass, rather than according to the political interest of the owners of the media, in Behind the Frequency (2013, 115 min).

Ucu won Jan Vrijman Fund (now Hubert Bals Fund) for her first short documentary script development Death in Jakarta (2006), Jakarta Foreign Correspondents Club grant for Conspiracy of Silence (2011), Ciptamedia Bersama Grant by Ford Foundation in collaboration with Wikimedia Indonesia and The Alliance of Independent Journalists Indonesia for Behind The Frequency (2013), the IDFA KID-DOC grant for Kid Documentary Farewell My School (2013). Her latest project How Far I’ll Go/Sejauh Kumelangkah won Tribeca Film Institute’s If/Then Short Pitch Competition South East Asia 2018 and receipt completion fund and mentorship. Ucu’s works have screened at the Berlinale Film Festival, the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Terres Des Femmes, Vesoul Film Festival, Tampere Film Festival, Cinema Novo and many other international film festivals worldwide.