Putri Marino on becoming 'Pertiwi' in Kamila Andini’s 'Empat Musim Pertiwi'

Long before production began, Kamila had already had Putri in mind for the role. She first mentioned the project to the actress while they were preparing Gadis Kretek, hoping that they might find their way back to another film together. When Putri finally read the script, she returned to it repeatedly, first as an outsider and then by trying to place herself inside ‘Pertiwi’. What struck her was how many voices seemed to be waiting to be heard.

Kamila describes Pertiwi as someone who may appear young but carries the inner life of someone who has lived through much more than her years suggest. She is capable of extraordinary strength because of what she has survived, but that strength does not erase her vulnerability.

For Kamila, the process also required humility. She recognised that she and Putri, as women living with certain urban privileges, could not assume they understood Pertiwi's experience completely. Their approach was therefore to return to zero, to empty out what they thought they knew and keep learning.

That distinction matters. Pertiwi is not a character to be easily explained, nor was her story reduced to the trauma she carried. She was someone shaped by it, but not defined entirely by it.

Putri responded with a level of preparation that went well beyond learning lines. She underwent workshops in horseback riding, singing, fighting, poetry, and even electrical workmanship, among other skills. It was a way of building a person rather than simply performing one. 

Empat Musim Pertiwi is the second time Kamila and Putri have worked together, but the familiarity between them did not come from spending every day together outside the set. They did not describe themselves as people who constantly hung out or shared everything with each other. Instead, their connection seemed to exist in the quieter space of the work.

“We somehow just understand each other,” Kamila said about their relationship. Putri called the connection ‘magic’. By the time they arrived at Empat Musim Pertiwi, they had already developed a shorthand that allowed them to work with less explanation and more trust.

For Putri, that trust is particularly important because an actress inevitably brings her own interpretation to a role. She may have an instinct about how Pertiwi should behave or feel in a scene, but Kamila gave her room to explore it while still protecting the character and the bigger picture.

Kamila, meanwhile, described Putri as an actress who does not need to over-discuss a scene. She asks whenever she needs clarification; otherwise, she always takes the work into the performance itself. Once the camera starts rolling, Kamila said, Putri becomes the character rather than appearing to simply play her.

There is a quiet sense of sisterhood in that exchange, but it is not built on sentimentality. It is built on understanding when to step forward and when to make space. Both women are persistent and demanding of themselves, Kamila noted, and that shared commitment may be precisely what allows them to trust each other so completely.

For Kamila, on one hand, home is closely tied to family and filmmaking. She describes the creative space she tries to build on set as one where people can feel comfortable, safe, and free to become themselves and give their best. It is also why she often chooses to work with people she has collaborated with before: there is value in growing together rather than starting from zero every time.

On the other hand, for Putri, home is not only about ease, but also freedom: being able to be herself without being afraid of being judged or of making mistakes. On Empat Musim Pertiwi, she found some of that familiarity in the returning crew from Gadis Kretek. The shared history made the production feel, in her words, like coming back to a home with a team that understood the same vision.

The film itself, meanwhile, had already begun its own journey away from home. Its premiere in Toronto marked an international chapter, followed by its return to Indonesia, where Kamila said her films ultimately belong: to the people, places, culture, and questions that inspire them. Yet she is also conscious that the questions in Empat Musim Pertiwi extend beyond Indonesia.

Even the visual direction of this shoot echoes that sense of wandering. Kamila describes Pertiwi as carrying the soul of an explorer, shaped in part by the experience of being cast out. In the film, she finds connection and strength among people who have also been discarded. The idea informed the decision to work with discarded objects and the atmosphere of a flea market for the shoot.

There is, fittingly, something unfinished about Pertiwi. She returned not as the woman who had left, but as someone carrying several versions of herself at once. The four seasons of Empat Musim Pertiwi reflect a life shaped by change, loss, return, and the possibility of starting over again.

On one hand, for Pertiwi, coming home means confronting what remains. For Kamila and Putri, on the other hand, the film has been an exercise in trust, giving each other room while holding on to a shared vision.

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