Strange Birds in Paradise - A West Papuan Story

A journey into just a few of the 250 cultures that exist in West Papua. Supplemented by travel reports and interviews, this film portrays the image of a land that has an extraordinary musical tradition and breathtaking scenery. However, the scars of Indonesian suppression are also clearly on display. The director Charlie Hill-Smith visited West Papua on a student exchange programme and has continued to maintain close relationships with its inhabitants ever since. He returned in 2006, this time with a camera and an enormous pool of knowledge about the country and its people. Hill-Smith’s driving force was his curiosity as to how two highly dynamic cultures can fight against each other without the rest of the world caring about it.