One day when Dian was 6 years old she heard a deep rumble and turned to see a tsunami of mud barreling toward her village, the result of a natural gas drilling accident. Dian’s mother scooped her up and saved her, but 16 villages, including Dian’s, were wiped away.

A decade later, nearly 60,000 people have been displaced from what was once a thriving industrial and residential area in East Java, located just 20 kilometers (less than 13 miles) from Indonesia’s second largest city. The environmental disaster has transformed the area into a barren moonscape of cracked mud 60 feet deep. And it transformed Dian from a helpless child into an inspiring activist, protesting on behalf of people who felt betrayed by a major employer and abandoned by a government that favored corporate power.

The aftermath of the Lapindo mudflow provides a case study in the intersections between corporate, citizen and government power: Victims organize to demand just compensation and restart their lives. The drilling company resists. The government delays. Grit follows these events, giving viewers a glimpse into the power—and also the limits—of democracy.

Key Participants
Hawarti – Dian’s mother; widowed by the Lapindo explosion, she works as a tour guide on the mudflow to earn much needed income

Dian – Hawarti’s daughter, a child at the time of the mudflow, now a teenager and activist

Fandi – Dian’s friend whose parents lost their jobs as a result of the Lapindo explosion

Aburizal Bakrie – owner of the Lapindo company

Joko “Jokowi” Widodo – worked in his family’s furniture business and served as governor of Jakarta before being elected president of Indonesia

Dadang Christanto – an artist known for pieces exploring human rights who creates installations of statues consumed by the mud

Key Issues
Grit is an excellent tool for outreach and will be of special interest to people who want to explore the following topics:

activism

drilling

environmental disasters

environmental justice

Indonesia

Lapindo mudflow

political and corporate corruption