Kata Hati

The annual Chinese spring festival dinner gets a little complicated when the family's only son brings home his Senegalese girlfriend.

For the longest time, Zaki has dreamed about coming to America. He enrolls himself in a business course and finds himself in New York City -- in an apartment with two illegal Indonesian immigrants; Ferdy and Mira, in Flushing, Queens. As he grapples with the harsh reality of living in the city, he finds himself slowly attracted to Mira. She helps him realize the possibilities of starting life anew -- possibilities that are threatened by an impending marriage and his awaited return to Malaysia

Motif focuses on a police investigation and its most obvious innovation is the female perspective that the director imposes. Protagonist Dewi (Sharifah Amani) is a police officer who is sent from the capital of Kuala Lumpur to a provincial area, Tanah Merah (lit. “Red Earth”), to investigate the disappearance of the young daughter of the local community’s richest family. From the beginning, her arrival is greeted with distrust by her male colleagues, who are doubly annoyed by the fact of having an outsider who is also a woman intrude in the community.