For Indonesian filmmaker Regas Banuteja, trance rituals are not about the supernatural or exotic, but about joy, community, and the different ways humans find happiness. In his latest film, Levitating (Para Perasque), which was submitted to Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, the director explores these themes through the story of a young musician’s relentless quest to become a spirit channeler, despite outside forces threatening his village.
Variety has an exclusive first look at a clip from the film.
Set in an Indonesian village where trance parties with shamans and spirit channelers are common, the story follows Bayu, a 20-year-old musician who aspires to become a spirit channeler, as he navigates a selection process to protect the village’s sacred springs from outside interests.
Banuteja graduated in film direction from Jakarta University of Arts in 2014. His short film “Lembusura” was submitted to the Berlinale in 2015, followed by “In the Year of Monkey” which won the Cannes Critics Weekly Best Short Film Award in 2016. His short story “No One is Crazy in This Town” was submitted to the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. His feature debut “Photocopier” premiered in Busan in 2015. In 2021, it won 12 Citra Awards and dominated the Indonesian film festival. His second feature, Andragogy, had its world premiere in Toronto in 2023 and was also performed in Busan.
“When I was little, I had a younger brother who claimed to see ghosts in the house: giant creatures with tails, bats, frogs. I couldn’t see any of them, and I remember feeling strangely jealous,” Bhanuteja says. “While I was trapped in the everyday world, he seemed to be playing with something invisible, warm and alive.”
The director emphasizes that in his childhood environment, ghosts were not treated as scary. “They lived with people and coexisted with everyday life,” he says. “As I started researching further, I realized that this was not just my childhood, and it was not limited to Indonesia. In different parts of Indonesia, and in many parts of Asia and the world, there are communal gatherings where people dance, go into a trance, become lighter, and leave feeling satisfied and liberated.”
Rather than portraying trance as something exotic or mystical, Bahanuteja wanted to explore it as an everyday communal experience. “What interested me was something much simpler: how many different ways humans find joy in life,” he explains. “Trance and sambétang (healing rituals) in this film are depicted as everyday communal experiences, moments when people step out of their daily lives, let go of pressure, and reconnect with others.”
The film also examines what happens when one version of happiness prevails. “When people become fixated on their own standards of success and progress, they often negate or undermine other ways of living,” says Bhanuteja. “In the film, that tension takes the form of an outside force trying to take Ratas Village away from its inhabitants.”
For the trance choreography, Bhanu Teja collaborated with choreographer Siko Setianto to create original movements rather than replicating existing traditions. “All of the choreography in this film is fictional. It is not taken from any particular cultural dance or ritual,” the director said. “From the beginning, I wanted to avoid focusing the movement on one tradition and instead create a physical language that felt intuitive and universal.”
The research team selected specific animal spirits, such as deer, buffalo, leeches, fleas, ants, and soft-shelled turtles, and Setyanto translated them into movement. “We imagined that each animal spirit would open up a different hallucinatory environment, so the choreography was designed to respond to that world,” explains Vanuteja. “For example, in areas where everything feels intensely fun, the movement is focused on the mouth and hands. In areas where people feel weightless and able to fly, the choreography shifts to legs and jumps.”
The choreography developed organically from composer Jenu Ariendra’s music. “Siko reacted instinctively to the music without overthinking it, and his body moved first. That instinctive process was essential,” says Banuteya. “For us, authenticity comes from sensation, not from description.”
The director wanted an actor who was willing to accept physical changes. According to Bhanu Teja, lead actor Anga Unanda “already had Bayu’s intensity within her”. “He trained for months, learned traditional wind instruments, reshaped his body to match the movements of animals, and pushed himself extremely hard, which reflected Bayu’s obsession in the story.”
For the role of the spirit channeler, Bhanuteja instinctively cast Anggun as the right choice. “Her voice has authority, but also intuition. We didn’t ask her to ‘act out’ the chant; she reacted to the music in real time and instinctively created the mantra in one take. That rawness would not have been possible in rehearsal,” he says.
The director added that actor Maudie “entered a completely different space, learned to express emotions through movement rather than words, and explored vulnerability with animal-inspired dance.”
“The process wasn’t about striving for perfection, but about letting go of controls, filters, and performance habits,” explains Bhanuteja. “Only through that kind of surrender can something more honest – a desire that is felt rather than acted – emerge. When that happens, I think the audience can feel it immediately.”
Despite the film’s specific cultural background, director Bhanuteja believes that its core emotions are universal. “That feeling is an obsession,” he says. “Bayu’s obsession with becoming a perask (spirit channeler) gradually separates him from the essence of the trance party: joy, connection, and being, which many of us recognize.”
“At a festival like Sundance, the audience comes from a variety of backgrounds, so I hope this film resonates not because of cultural specifics, but because of that common feeling,” Vanuteja says. “It’s a reminder that when you chase something too much, you risk losing the simple relationships that matter most.”
Watch the clip here:
