
The Drowning Megacity: Indonesia's Sinking Capital
Jakarta is sinking, in places by as much as 25 centimeters a year, while roughly 40% of the city already sits below sea level. This film tracks the causes, from unchecked groundwater extraction to the torrential rains that global warming has intensified, and follows the government's response: a colossal offshore dike meant to wall off the Java Sea before the capital goes under entirely. Engineers, officials, and residents explain what the project would mean for a metropolis of over ten million people, many of them living in flood-prone kampungs that already flood every rainy season. The film also revisits the 2004 tsunami that killed nearly 170,000 people in Aceh province, a disaster still shaping how Indonesians think about water as both livelihood and threat. Between engineering briefings and street-level footage of flooded neighborhoods, the documentary lays out a slow-motion emergency: a capital city racing infrastructure against subsidence and rising seas, with relocation of the entire government to a new capital on Borneo looming as the fallback plan.