(L-R) The cast and crew of “Levitating (Para Perasuk)” attend its Premiere during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at The Yarrow Theatre on January 24, 2026 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images)
By Adam Silverstein
When Levitating (Para Perasuk) begins at The Yarrow Theatre, it feels less like settling in for a screening and more like stepping into a shared trance. The music starts early — chiming, banging, looping — and never really lets go. From the opening moments, the film announces its intentions clearly: This is a world governed by spirits, movement, and belief.
Directed by Wregas Bhanuteja, Levitating plays in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition and feels unmistakably singular — colorful, imaginative, and alive. Set in an Indonesian town where pleasure is found through possession, the film follows Bayu (Angga Yunanda), a young man drawn to the power of trance rituals, hoping to become a shaman who can lead ecstatic, communal ceremonies.
Bhanuteja introduces the film beaming, running on three hours of sleep after a 30-hour journey from Indonesia. He tells the audience the idea began when he was 6 years old, listening to his brother describe spirits in their house — including a cat with three tails — while he sat playing PlayStation, jealous that he couldn’t see anything supernatural himself. So he made this film. He speaks about the world of Levitating as if it’s entirely real — not myth, not fantasy, just another way of understanding reality.
That sincerity carries through the film. Possession here isn’t demonic or frightening; it’s ecstatic. People drink their own blood, crawl like tigers, dance wildly in mud baths, move until they collapse. The choreography is loose and hypnotic, often blurring the line between ritual and performance. At times, the film feels like a musical.
Underneath the spectacle is something more grounded. Levitating is ultimately about what happens when people are allowed to move, believe, and feel without shame. Bhanuteja says the film is about “finding happiness, obsession, ambition — and not letting people down because of our ambition.” That tension runs quietly beneath the chaos.
During the Q&A, Bhanuteja explains that meditation played a key role in shaping the film. “I always meditate on something disturbing my mind,” he says. “I want to rid those bad energies and focus on what matters: the love from people around me.” The production itself was two years in the making, involving over 500 people.
The cast’s commitment is written all over the screen. Maudy Ayunda, who plays Laksmi, shares that she spent months training for the intense dance sequences, enduring swollen legs and ice baths. “Wregas told me to let my body lead the way,” she says. “It allowed freedom on set.” Yunanda, who appears in roughly 60 scenes, laughs when asked about the process. “Everything was hard,” he says. After long dance sequences, he could barely walk. “If I tell everything, I’d be here for two hours.”
When the film ends, the cast hugs onstage, visibly emotional. The audience responds in kind — warm applause, smiles, a sense that something unusual has just passed through the room. Levitating doesn’t explain itself or translate its culture for outsiders. It invites you in, asks you to move with it, and trusts you’ll figure it out.
