Sundance Competition Title ‘Levitating’ Director Wregas Bhanuteja on Finding Joy in Trance Rituals, Clip Unveiled (EXCLUSIVE)

For Indonesian filmmaker Wregas Bhanuteja, trance rituals aren’t about the supernatural or exotic — they’re about joy, community, and the many different ways humans find happiness. In “Levitating” (Para Perasuk), his latest feature competing in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance, the director explores these themes through the story of a young musician’s obsessive quest to become a spirit channeler, even as outside forces threaten his village.

Variety is exclusively debuting a clip from the film.

Set in an Indonesian village where trance parties led by shamans and spirit channelers are common practice, the narrative follows Bayu, a 20-year-old musician aspiring to become a spirit channeler, as he navigates a selection process to save the village’s sacred spring from outside interests.

Bhanuteja graduated in film directing from Jakarta Institute of Arts in 2014. His short film “Lembusura” competed at the Berlinale in 2015, followed by a best short film win at Cannes Critics’ Week with “In the Year of Monkey” in 2016. His short “No One is Crazy in This Town” competed at Sundance in 2020. His feature debut, “Photocopier,” premiered at Busan in 2021 and swept the Indonesian Film Festival with 12 Citra Awards. His sophomore feature, “Andragogy,” had its world premiere at Toronto in 2023 and played Busan.

“I grew up with a younger sibling who, as a child, claimed he could see spirits in our house, be it giant creatures with tails, bats, frogs. I couldn’t see any of them, and I remember feeling oddly jealous,” Bhanuteja says. “While I was stuck in the ordinary world, he seemed to be playing with something invisible, warm, and alive.”

The director emphasizes that in his childhood environment, spirits weren’t treated as frightening. “They lived alongside people, coexisted with daily life,” he says. “And as I began researching more, I realized this wasn’t unique to my childhood or even to Indonesia. In different parts of Indonesia – and in many places across Asia and the world – there are communal gatherings where people dance, enter trance, and leave feeling lighter, satisfied, released.”

Rather than depicting trance as exotic or mysterious, Bhanuteja wanted to explore it as an everyday communal experience. “What interested me was something much simpler: how many different ways humans find joy in life,” he explains. “Trance and sambetan in this film are shown as everyday communal experiences, moments where people step out of their routines, let go of pressure, and reconnect with others.”

The film also examines what happens when one version of happiness becomes dominant. “When people become obsessed with their own standards of success or progress, they often end up dismissing or even harming other ways of living,” Bhanuteja says. “In the film, that tension takes the form of an outside force trying to take away Latas Village from its people.”

For the trance choreography, Bhanuteja collaborated with choreographer Siko Setyanto to create original movement rather than replicate existing traditions. “All of the choreography in the film is fictional. It isn’t taken from any specific cultural dance or ritual,” the director notes. “From the start, I wanted to avoid pointing the movement toward one tradition and instead create a physical language that felt intuitive and universal.”

The team selected specific animal spirits – deer, buffalo, leeches, fleas, ants, and softshell turtles – which Setyanto translated into movement. “We then imagined that each animal spirit opens a different hallucinatory environment. So the choreography was designed to respond to that world,” Bhanuteja explains. “For example, in a realm where everything tastes intensely pleasurable, the movement centers on the mouth and hands. In a realm where people feel weightless and able to fly, the choreography shifts toward the legs and jumping.”

The choreography developed organically from composer Yennu Ariendra’s music. “Siko responded to the music instinctively, where his body moving first, without overthinking. That instinctive process was essential,” says Bhanuteja. “Authenticity for us didn’t came from sensation rather than explanation.”

The director sought actors willing to embrace physical transformation. Lead actor Angga Yunanda “already had Bayu’s intensity inside him,” according to Bhanuteja. “He trained for months, learned a traditional wind instrument, reshaped his body for animal-based movement, and pushed himself very hard, which mirrored Bayu’s obsession in the story.”

For the spirit channeler role, Bhanuteja cast Anggun, whom he felt was instinctively right. “Her voice carries authority, but also intuition. We didn’t ask her to ‘act’ the chants. She responded to music in real time, creating mantras instinctively, in single takes. That rawness couldn’t be rehearsed,” he says.

Actor Maudy “entered a completely different space, learning to express emotion through movement rather than words, exploring vulnerability through animal-inspired dance,” the director adds.

“The process was not about reaching perfection, but about letting go of control, filters, and performance habits,” Bhanuteja explains. “Only through that kind of surrender could something more honest emerge – a desire that isn’t acted, but felt. When that happens, I believe the audience can sense it immediately.”

Despite the film’s specific cultural context, Bhanuteja believes its core emotion is universal. “That emotion is obsession,” he says. “Bayu’s obsession with becoming a perasuk (spirit-channeler) slowly pulls him away from the true essence of the trance party – which is joy, connection, and being present. And that’s something many of us recognize.”

“At a festival like Sundance, where audiences come from many different backgrounds, I hope the film resonates not because of its cultural details, but because of that shared feeling,” Bhanuteja says. “The reminder that when we chase something too hard, we risk losing the simple human connections that matter most.”

Watch the clip here: