A group of illiterate, homeless kids battle for survival on the streets of Yogyakarta; their lives are mired in violence, crime and glue-sniffing. The one person who cares for them is the batik-seller Asih (played by veteran star Christine Hakim, also the film’s producer), often shaken down for cash by her estranged husband, who tries to save herself from perpetual grief by hardening her heart to the kids’ fates. The film focuses on three kids in particular, all of whom meet bad ends. The cocky Kancil dies riding on the roof of a train when it enters a tunnel. The slightly older Heru (who fancies that he could be Asih’s lover) is murdered after becoming a pawn in an insurance scam. And Sugeng is knifed for wearing a stolen leather jacket. The kids were played by real-life street-kids; two of them died soon after the film was made. It has roots in a documentary project on Yogyakarta street-kids (Kancil’s Story About Independence) that Garin made for Japan’s national broadcaster NHK in 1995. His central premise is that the kids’ lives are defined by the absence of their mothers; everything they do and feel, from their drug highs to their sexual kicks, obliquely expresses that absence. Tony Rayns