ctrl + f
A quiet short blending Southeast Asian nostalgia with digital loneliness.
Inspired by In the Mood for Love’s romantic distance and the static ache of memory.
ctrl f — a shortcut to search — becomes a metaphor for longing.
This film is about searching for what can’t always be found.
Selected Shots
May 2025
Behind The Work:
I started feeling the urge to make a project centered around the theme of connection during my first semester at The New School. There was this overwhelming search happening inside me—a longing for home, for people, for familiarity, for something deeper. I tried capturing that in a few smaller projects, each touching on ideas of nostalgia and home, but none of them felt fully realized. So when one of my film classes gave me the chance, I knew I wanted to finally do it right.
I was also exploring motif and rhythm in storytelling — recurring visual cues that build emotional continuity. I used the actor’s clothing to subtly reflect mood and character development, and I wanted to weave in elements of Indonesian culture as well. Cigarettes, for example — while they might seem trivial — hold real weight in both Indonesian cinema and everyday life. They became a small but intentional symbol in the film.
Finally, I wanted to explore the theme of connection between the digital world and emotional depth. There’s something about the intersection of loneliness and the digital space that fascinates me—how we can feel so much through screens, through signals, through code. That emotional-static blur was something I tried to tap into. A big influence, maybe even subconsciously, was Radiohead—a band I’m a huge fan of—whose work constantly blends digital textures with very raw human feeling.
It wasn’t a perfect film, not at all. There were weaknesses in focus, and some people might find the coding-based title card confusing. Maybe I should’ve leaned into that more clearly. But for something I pulled together in about four days, it was all I needed. I think I did a pretty good job creating an interplay between the digicam footage and my mirrorless camera work. The step printing process—while something I still want to master—was used thoughtfully. And most of all, I’m proud of how I directed the actors, who fully leaned into the film’s dreamlike narrative and helped bring it to life in a really genuine way. It was raw, it was real, and it was necessary.
Now it’s time to level up. To learn from this, and do more.
Special thanks to the inspirations that helped shape ctrl f:
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai), Mr. Robot (Sam Esmail), and the music creators behind "Aroma Dia" by Sisitipsi and "Kukira Kau Rumah" by Amigdala.
ctrl f is the result of that effort. It became my way of exploring the things I hadn’t been brave enough to approach before. The film went through a lot of experimentation.
One of my main goals was to give homage to Sam Esmail, the creator of Mr. Robot, a series I deeply admire. I leaned into that by experimenting with coding and letting that influence the film’s aesthetic. I worked within the limits of what I had: a computer, command prompt, YouTube, and the drive to figure things out. The title card, the ending, even the credits were all built with code, and I think it added a layer that felt honest to the world I was building.
Another goal was to honor Wong Kar Wai and his iconic step printing process. I’ve played with his technique in smaller works before, like Senja Bisu Kita, and some school pieces, but never in a more personal project. This time, I committed to it. I think I did a good job integrating that style, and it reminded me how much I still want to master digital camerawork in a way that feels poetic, not just clean.