Film: When the Waterhorse Seeks a New Home

When the Water Horse Seeks a New Home

A 25-Minute Documentary Film

The Project

When the Water Horse Seeks a New Home is a 25-minute documentary by award-winning Indonesian filmmaker Andrianus Merdhi. The film follows a small plastic animal figurine found on an abandoned Rohingya refugee boat washed ashore on a beach in Aceh, Indonesia, nearly two thousand kilometres from where the journey began. Through this object, the film traces the human story of displacement, loss, and resilience behind Rohingya maritime crossings of the Andaman Sea. It uses Acehnese and Rohingya lay actors to imaginatively reconstruct pivotal experiences before and after their arrival, creating a space between testimony and creative storytelling.

Why This Film Matters

Maritime refugees remain largely invisible in public discourse, reduced to statistics or crisis headlines. This documentary restores their voices and humanity. It is designed for dual impact: as an educational resource for high school and university classrooms, fostering evidence-based understanding and critical thinking about border policies and their human consequences; and as a festival-quality film for international documentary festivals, reaching broader public audiences to build empathy and inform civic engagement.

Film Director: Award-winning Indonesian documentary filmmaker Andrianus "Oetjoe" Merdhi.

Academic leads: Professor Antje Missbach, University of Bielefeld; Associate Professor Gerhard Hoffstaedter, University of Queensland

Screening: If you would like to organise a screening please contact Roswitha Rohlfing. We will then provide you with the film and all other necessary information.