Papa Buka (English, Tok Pisin)
In 1942, when World War II reached the Pacific, thousands of native Papua New Guineans helped Australian and Allied soldiers fight the Japanese — not just as combatants, but as carriers, rescuers, and guides. Alongside them were Indian soldiers, serving under the British Army, many of whom died on that distant soil. Their contributions, like their graves, were largely left unmarked.
It is into this silence that Papa Buka, a rare collaboration between India and Papua New Guinea, steps carefully. Directed by Dr Biju, the film revisits a forgotten corner of World War II through the lens of memory and loss. Rather than recounting battles, the film lingers on what follows them, and how remembrance survives among those who were used, erased, and left to keep the stories alive.
Set between the bustle of Port Moresby and the quiet of PNG’s rainforests, Papa Buka follows two Indian historians, Romila Chatterjee (Ritabhari Chakraborty) and Anand Kunjiraman (Prakash Bare), as they travel through the Pacific island nation researching India’s unacknowledged wartime role. For Romila, the trip is deeply personal. She hopes to trace the remains of her grandfather, an Indian soldier who fought with the British Army and died here during the war. For Anand, who comes from a background marked by caste prejudice, the journey becomes a way of connecting with another colonised people, bound by shared histories of exploitation and survival.
The film’s opening stretch, set in Port Moresby, takes time to establish the two historians and what they have set out to do in Papua New Guinea. Some of this portion feels stiff, weighed down by dialogue that explains too much. But once the pair venture inland, guided by the elderly war veteran Papa Buka (Sine Boboro) and translator Sike (John Sike), Papa Buka begins to breathe. The forest, rendered in soft light and slow pans by cinematographer Yedhu Radhakrishnan, becomes a living repository of history, every rustle and shadow echoing the past to which it stood witness.
Ritabhari Chakraborty is thoughtful and grounded as Romila, a woman whose academic poise gives way to personal vulnerabilities as her journey deepens. Prakash Bare brings warmth and a quiet dignity to Anand. Together, their chemistry is effortless, capturing the ease of two people who share both purpose and affection.
But the film’s beating heart is the eponymous Papa Buka. As a man who embodies memory itself, guiding the outsiders through a terrain that holds both answers and absences, Sine Boboro’s presence is calm yet magnetic. He is wise and grounded, but also mischievous — at one point dashing off into the jungle in pursuit of a rare bird, leaving the historians scrambling behind him.
Language plays a central role in Papa Buka. The film moves between Tok Pisin, English, and Indian languages, often repeating dialogue in translation. What could have felt repetitive instead becomes a poetic device, acting as a reminder that memory itself is an act of translation, and that every story carries the risk of being lost in its retelling. Sike’s role as translator is therefore more than functional. He becomes a bridge, linking worlds that would otherwise remain separate.
One of the most moving moments in the film comes when the team arrives at the Kaiori village. After listening to the elders share stories of the war, the visitors sit around a campfire, as the villagers sing and dance for them in an act of indulgent hospitality. There’s nothing performative about it. It feels like a moment of quiet generosity, and it fills you with a rare sense of warmth — the feeling of being allowed to witness living history rather than merely document it.
Papa Buka is also well aware of its own acts of representation. Dr Biju avoids exoticising PNG or turning its people into cinematic spectacle. Even the moments that betray the PNG cast’s inexperience – uneven line delivery, hesitant pacing – feel oddly appropriate. Their rawness fits a film that resists polish, one that honours the idea of authenticity over artifice. It’s little surprise, then, that the film has been selected as PNG’s official entry for the Oscars in the Best International Feature Film category, in a historic first for the nation.
By its end, the film becomes a quiet lament for those who fought wars that were never theirs. The Indian soldiers who served foreign masters or the indigenous Papuans who carried their burdens were all “incidental actors,” as Sike puts it, in someone else’s theatre of power. Yet through Dr Biju’s lens, they are no longer background figures. They are the film’s conscience, reclaiming a place in history not through triumph, but through the simple act of being remembered.
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the film. Neither TNM nor any of its reviewers have any sort of business relationship with the film’s producers or any other members of its cast and crew.