A landscape advertised as Sumba in the new Indonesian drama The Blue Departure is actually a beach on Lombok, according to a location match made by a Yogyakarta used-book seller and confirmed by the production company. The discovery has sharpened criticism of the film’s campaign, which paired its story of a first direct Bali-to-Sumba flight with images of a destination that does not exist.
Maraisa R. Oliveira said she recognised the curved shore and twin headlands while watching the film on Thursday. She had just bought a second-hand Lombok travel guide on Jalan Malioboro, Yogyakarta’s best-known shopping street, and compared its photograph with the cinema screen. “I went in expecting Sumba. I came out thinking: I know that beach,” she said.
The island on screen
The scene is filmed at Tanjung Aan, a beach on Lombok’s southern coast, the production’s own location supervisor confirmed on Friday. The company, Sagara Frame, said the crew spent 22 days on Lombok and six on Sumba, where the fictional town of Wae Naru is meant to be. Its location list had described the beach scene as “South Sumba coast”.
The film follows a fictional airline preparing a direct flight from Bali to Wae Naru, which its characters present as a remote Sumba gateway. A campaign for the release repeated the route on a mock-up boarding pass and described the story as inspired by a “service Indonesia has been waiting for”. The airline named in the campaign, Arunika Archipelago Airways, said it has no such route planned.
“A film can invent a town, but the campaign made people think the flight was real,” said Toma Grgić-Bogdanović, the film’s director. He said the landscape was chosen for its visual appeal and that the company had not intended to pass Lombok off as Sumba. “We should have made the distinction clear in the publicity,” he added.
A route becomes a dispute
Residents and tourism businesses on Sumba said the mix-up mattered because the campaign had been treated as a promise of easier access. Enzo Serna, who runs a guesthouse near Waingapu, said three callers had asked whether tickets for the Bali route were already on sale. “We cannot build a travel season around a flight that exists only in a screenplay,” he said.
Arunika Archipelago Airways said the route was a fictional plot device and that its marketing team had approved the boarding-pass image as a film tie-in, not a service announcement. It has asked Sagara Frame to remove wording that could be read as a confirmed launch. The film has earned Rp41.6 billion (about €2.3 million) in Indonesian ticket sales since opening on 24 September, according to the company.
The dispute has split viewers. Some praised the film for drawing attention to Sumba, while others said a production with a Rp2.8 billion (about €155,000) public tourism grant should have labelled its invented route and composite locations plainly. A provincial tourism official said the grant was for promotion of the islands, not for airline development.
The classification board has received 184 complaints since Friday, mostly about the marketing rather than the film itself, its public hotline reported. It has no authority to order a change to the story, but Sagara Frame said it would revise online trailers and add a location note to future screenings. The director said the company would also meet Sumba tourism representatives next week.
