34 minutes, HD video, 2026

In a dispatch from the back-room of a museum, the ghost of a long-dead orangutan returns to narrate early 20th century propaganda films documenting Sumatra’s plantations. She recounts acts of resistance of those, human and non-human, who came before and after her. A Person of the Forest is a ghost story of the colonial past summoned to disturb the present. ‘We, like all people, want to live and we want to be free’.

Commissioned for the Eye Filmmuseum, the Netherlands, as part of the group exhibition Eye(s) Open – New Perspectives on Colonial Film Heritage, April – September 2026 .

“Watching Pennell’s film, I found myself overcome by grief; how many worlds have ended before, under the same colonial, genocidal drive that continues to shape our present? In this film, the end never finishes beginning.”
Lilly Markaki, Open City Texts

Researched, written and edited by Miranda Pennell     
Composer Simon Fisher Turner
Made with support from Eye Filmmuseum, the Netherlands