MAIA: A Solarpunk Story (MAIA: Sebuah Cerita Solarpunk)
2025 · 16m · Indonesia
Directed by Lesra Ariel Herdiaji
Genres: adventure, animation, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, mythic, tender
Alfea, a scientist living in the comforts of Maia — the last standing city on Earth — meets Aruna, an outsider seeking help for her endangered village; together they uncover the secrets behind Maia. A hand-illustrated animated solarpunk story conceived as an introduction to sustainability for teenagers.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Solarpunk is the most predictable utopian premise imaginable—right up until an Indonesian animator decides to hand-illustrate the whole thing and suddenly the genre's sanctimony dissolves into something that actually breathes; Herdiaji's refusal to go digital is the subversive move everyone else in cli-fi was too lazy to make.
The film's lineage runs through both the pedagogical animation tradition and the emerging solarpunk canon, but what matters is how deliberately it positions itself within both—the handmade illustration style grounds the speculative premise in craft tradition rather than letting it float into abstraction.
The single decision to render every frame by hand rather than digitally transforms a teenage-audience sustainability pitch into something with actual visual weight; when Alfea and Aruna walk through Maia, you feel the artist's deliberation in every line, and that tactile specificity is what makes the ecological argument land instead of preach.
Festivals
- CinemaSHORT Asian Short Film Competition 2025