The Bali International Cinema Festival (BICIF) grew from the curatorial spirit of Ubud: Cinecurious, a community-based film screening and discussion initiative founded by the late John Badalu in collaboration with Titik Dua Ubud.

Building on this foundation and the longstanding work of Silurbarong.co in developing independent cinema and visual culture in Bali, BICIF aims to expand these efforts into an annual international film festival rooted in social, cultural, and ecological awareness. Through film screenings, discussions, workshops, and creative collaborations, BICIF envisions cinema as more than entertainment, a platform for reflection, advocacy, and connection between stories, communities, and perspectives.

Suara Yang Hilang

What can the voice hold when a language, a landscape, a tradition, or a way of life begins to disappear?

Conceived by Garin Nugroho as part of Kepulauan Ingatan, his 45-year creative journey, Mimbar Suara is a vocal forum where songs, chants, spoken narratives, movement, and personal experience become ways of telling stories and exchanging perspectives.

Rather than a conventional discussion, each artist takes the stage through their own vocal practice. Songs and chants become the starting point for stories of research, history, lived experience, and cultural memory, followed by conversations with the audience.

For its first edition, Mimbar Suara: Suara Yang Hilang looks at cultural heritage through the things gradually disappearing around us: languages, land, flora and fauna, agricultural traditions, and the cultural spaces increasingly displaced by modern life.

Across three days, three artists from Papua, Surabaya, and Bali bring three distinct perspectives on what it means to lose something—and what might still be remembered, retold, and found again.