Jahannam (film)

Jahannam (International title: Hell 2096) is a 2021 Bornean science-fiction environmental comedy/thriller anthology film directed by singer Putri Norizah, based on a screenplay by Brandon Vandort. The film presents a worst-case scenario which presents the ramification of worsening environmental damage, climate change and constant ignorance of environmental issues, including water wastage. The film's title refers to Jahannam, the Islamic depiction of Hell.

The film premiered at the 75th Borneo Film Festival on December 25th 2021.

Plot
The film is divided into ten segments called "chapters", each following the same plot of environmental destruction and ignorance. Each character or their children appear in two or more segments to give the effect of a timeline narrative. The only character appearing in all ten segments is John Ehnström, the film's central antagonist.

2021
A climate change awareness protest marches through the streets of St. Michaelsburg. The protest is led by environmental advocacy group Gaia's Tears, demanding that Borneo's National Energy Grid phase out all of its coal plants. The demonstrators gather outside the NEG building, but are approached by police officers commanding them to disperse or they will open fire at them. A Chinese demonstrator, Chen, furiously and bravely berates an officer, claiming that such officers work no longer for the government, but for "corporations who want to trade environmental health for entire vaults of money". Chen is arrested, but the protesters hold their ground and continue to protest, while some of them leave for their own safety.

Riot police are finally dispatched to silence the protests, and once they arrive, they are told by their chief, John Ehnström, to open fire at the protesters. The officers do so, forcing them to disperse at last. Ehnström smirks evilly at the sight, implying that he is anti-environmentalist and asked the police to silence the protests for his own pleasure.

2022
In Limbang, Temburong, Portuguese Burgher João Fonseca is a cryptocurrency enthusiast who sells NFTs on the art-sharing site DeviantArt. One day, he draws a picture of Boyfriend, the main character in the 2020 rhythm video game Friday Night Funkin', and mints it as an NFT, selling it to an anonymous boss for 500 bitcoin. The following day, he begins experiencing hallucinations and strange dreams reminding him about the negative aspects of NFTs.

That night, he is approached by an Indian Muslim "cryptoskeptic" (a critic of cryptocurrency) named Aamir. He tells Fonseca that if he continues selling NFTs, he will contribute to worsening climate change, as cryptocurrency transactions are known to leave large carbon footprints. Fonseca is unconvinced and angrily tells the "cryptoskeptic" to leave, which he does. Fonseca then goes back to work on more NFTs to sell to his boss. It is revealed that the boss is Ehnström, the police chief in the first segment.

2026
In a floating village in Outer Borneo, Ramlee, a Banjarese fisherman, makes a living off of fishing for tilapia and cod. During one summer, he begins to notice that the fish are becoming less and less numerous. Returning with only a small bundle of his catch (26 tilapia and 8 cod), he returns home to roast two of the tilapia for him and his family to eat. He is visited by his neighbor Aamir, who appeared in the prior segment, the next day.

He offers Ramlee 50 Bornean dollars in exchange for giving him a whole tuna. Ramlee, initially unsure knowing the declining number of fish, reluctantly accepts the offer, and gets on his boat. After a night of fishing, he finally catches a tuna and gives it to Aamir as part of the offer. He refuses the money, but eventually agrees to keep it until he wishes to take it back.

Aamir cuts open the fish intending to cook it. To his horror, he finds plastic and paper articles in the inside of the tuna. Ramlee barges in at the last second and gives Aamir the 50 dollars he agreed to receive. Ramlee then walks back to his house, embarrassed, as the sound of a news report on Ehnström's resignation from the St. Michaelsburg Metro Police as superintendent plays in the background.

2031
In Antarctica, a Borneoan-led expedition is sent to study the worsening climate conditions. The leader of the expedition, a Kristang man named Carlo de Costa, leads his team across the Antarctic ice. Chen, now a researcher, notices something off with the consistency of the ice. As they walk into a flock of running penguins, they hear what appears to be a sudden clap of thunder.

Unbeknownst to them, the ice has started melting at a faster pace than before, and the "thunder" they heard earlier had just come from a calving glacier. Ramlee's son, now one of the explorers, comes across a dead penguin and brings it back to the ship's lab for analysis. After finding out that the penguin was killed by methane poisoning, another clap of thunder sounds, but more play in rapid succession.

The researchers come to the realization that the ice shelf they explored is now starting to collapse. The researchers attempt to steer the ship away, but to no avail. Chen begins to cry in anguish as the ship is crushed by falling glaciers and sinks.

A newspaper article, involving the sale of the now-privatized NEG by a Chinese businessman under the alias "Wang Liu", appears in the story.

2046
Ehnström is now the CEO of Helios Energy, a large industrial firm based in New York. After being fired from the Bornean Police Force in 2025, a year after another botched climate protest in St. Michaelsburg, he has returned from the United States as the corrupt corporate boss Ryan Hoffman, disguised in a silicone mask, matching gloves and a suit and tie to conceal his now-abandoned previous identity as John.

In April, Ehnström calls his executives (including an older Fonseca) to a meeting, and announces that they will visit a recently-opened oil rig in the South China Sea. However, an oil spill occurs on the platform. Ehnström and his executives laugh on, and when some of the workers threaten to quit, Ehnström angrily refuses their threats, forcing them to go back to work and ignore the environmental ramifications of the oil spill.

An older Ramlee emerges from his hut, and shrieks at the sight of the blackened water. His fear turns to anger when he sees a speeding yacht with Ehnström and his executives aboard, and curses at him repeatedly until his wife calms him down and Ramlee retreats back inside.

2051
A Dayak mother and her daughter are visiting the Borneo Zoologic Gardens to see various animals. They take pictures of giraffes, lions, and other animals. They are about to enter the rhino exhibit, but when the daughter touches the "rhino", she realizes it is a mere statue. A tour guide tells her that real rhinos have ceased to exist. This disappoints the daughter, who continues on anyway.

The next day, an older British tourist, his Chinese Peranakan girlfriend Laura, and his friends come to the zoo to take pictures as well. The British kid is weirded out by the fact that all of the animals do not move and look fake. The tour guide then tells the kid that all the animals had gone extinct so the zoo had to replace them with statues. Disappointed, the British kid and his friends walk out of the zoo. As it closes, the cleaners come to wipe the statues clean. The tour guide is revealed to be Janet, Chen's daughter in the next segment.

2061
The city of Singkawang in Pontianak is attacked by contaminated air and smog, caused by a large-scale fire which resulted from an explosion at a coal plant, forcing all of its inhabitants to wear oxygen masks when going outside. Chen's distraught Chinese Peranakan husband, Ricky, is a former worker at the coal plant who left 30 years ago due to Chen's death, and now lives with his children Janet and Ryan and their grandchildren Brandon, Stevie and Laura (the one from the prior segment).

After one month, the situation worsens. The smog is now so bad that visibility is reduced, and this has gone to the point of Ricky's death. Janet, Ryan and their respective children, donning oxygen masks, head outside for Ricky's burial. It turns out that the smog is coming no longer from the now-extinguished fire, but from a nearby forest fire, and find out that the entire city is to be evacuated.

The three pack their bags and leave the city inside a convoy, still dressed in their Sunday best.

2071
In rural Kapit, Ahmad, an Arab Peranakan farmer, lives with his family on their farmhouse. His farm struggles with crop failures: although his rice and wheat grow well due to hydroponics, the vegetables he is growing do not. Ahmad and his family have started to use up all the remaining fruit, vegetables and crops they grew in the past. Even worse, clean water is no longer available in their household.

One day, Ahmad is approached by Monique, a Dutch Indo running a fruit orchard growing apples and mangoes. Monique tells Ahmad she is experiencing the same problem. Two National Agency for the Environment and Public Utilities agents then enter the village, taking samples of soil from Ahmad's farm and Monique's orchard and sending it to St. Michaelsburg. The agents come back to reveal to them a shocking truth.

It turns out that the soil in Kapit and Sarawak is becoming poisoned by constant usage of pesticides and chemical pollution, and Ahmad is horrified knowing that it will not be long before he and his fellow farmers suffer. Ahmad chooses to take his family to Kuching for them to live a better life. While driving away, he sees two Helios Energy workers spraying pesticide. Ahmad's expression turns to anger before the segment finishes.

2081
In Inner Borneo, various lumberjacks wearing oxygen masks are sent by the multinational industrial conglomerate Steecoalios, formed from the merger of Helios Energy and various steel manufacturing and mining companies, to clear the state's last remaining section of the Bornean rainforest and evict its animal inhabitants to make way for a nuclear power plant. One of the lumberjacks, revealed to be Ahmad's son Mahmoud, and his Malay colleague Syed, are reluctant to do so.

Mahmoud comes across his daughter's Dutch Jew friend, who has been reduced to an emaciated, baldened figure with sores all over. He then finds out that both his parents died 6 years ago, with Ahmad dying first of renal failure due to lack of water and his wife Sanya of starvation. While reminiscing about his memories with his family, his taskmaster snaps him out and tells him to get to work. He does as he is told and starts cutting off the trees with a chainsaw.

Three months later, the nuclear plant is now in operation. Steecoalios' CEO, Erik Ehnström (under the alibi Randall Bergeron) visits the plant, clad in his suit and tie, male silicone mask, gloves and gasmask and carrying his briefcase, accompanied by his executives and his now 103-year-old grandfather John, and meets up with some of the workers. However, the plant workers have become angry at Erik and his executives.

One of the bosses furiously berates Erik, telling him that Erik had used him for his own personal gain and forced him to hurt his employees if they didn't comply. He walks out along with some of the workers, leaving an angered and betrayed Erik to find more workers for hire. The segment ends with a news report from SMCT talking about an explosion at the nuclear plant and the evacuation of all its staff.

2096
St. Michaelsburg has been reduced to a barren, smoggy, industrial wasteland, as a consequence of environmental destruction. The Brunei River has been drained and the Brunei Bay has been polluted by industrial and plastic waste and chemicals. Steecoalios, having controlled almost all companies in Borneo, took over the government, and everyone abandoned recycling, tree-planting and other environmentalist practices in favor of funding Steecoalios.

In a large garbage dumpsite, two garbage truckers, a Tamil Indian named Suraj "Raj" and his Javanese friend Rizwan "Riz" come across a newspaper article from 2021 in the trash, with the suppression of the environmental protests from the first segment as the top story. Raj then reminisces about the death of his father, Rajesh, in a bungled Antarctic expedition, and how his mother killed herself out of despair a month later.

The two runmage through the trash for other newspaper articles to collect. They find out the shocking truth: constant water, land and air pollution, environmental damage and wastage of natural resources, worsened by forced ignorance of environmental issues, have all left Borneo to face the consequences of irreversible environmental destruction and encouragement of dysgenics.

In 2021, a major climate protest in St. Michaelsburg was silenced by order of Police Chief John Ehnström. After ordering the dispersal of other climate change protests, he was eventually demoted to superintendent in 2025. An angry Ehnström resigned his post and moved on to his sizeable property firm named New Worlds Development, notorious for destroying farmland and sections of rainforest in order to make way for large-scale real estate projects.

In 2029, Ehnström faked his death, assuming the identity of a Chinese businessman, and bought the now-privatized NEG, renaming it Helios and moving its headquarters to New York. He had long been ordering the destruction of Borneo's rainforests to make way for housing projects and coal and nuclear power plants, and continued to have more oil platforms be built on Bornean waters, at the expense of marine life.

Ehnström faked his death once again in 2043, achieving his present Hoffman alias, before passing it on to his descendants with time. An explosion at a coal plant in 2061, exacerbated by lack of firefighters, hot temperatures and large amounts of coal, forced the abandonment of Singkawang. Sintang would later be abandoned due to hypoxia concerns raised by lack of trees to produce oxygen.

Eventually, much of western Borneo including the states of Kapit and Pontianak emptied out due to soil contamination, desertification and worsened climate change, and various animals, including the rhinoceros hornbill (the national bird of Borneo) were declared extinct. In 2081, the last forest in Inner Borneo (it was revealed that there are still large pockets of forest deep in the Bornean mountains) was razed by Helios to make way for a nuclear plant which exploded three months into the beginning of operations.

The climax came in 2092 when Helios, now renamed Steecoalios due to its acquisition of other industrial, development and energy firms, took over the Bornean government. Environmentalist practices were abandoned in favor of consumerism and environmental ignorance, and Borlish, a type of Bornean slang, was declared the sole official language of the country. People are eventually renamed their nicknames as a result.

Reading their analysis, Raj is stupefied and becomes embarrassed, faced with the realization that the older generation had been the ones responsible. He walks out of the room in shame while Riz talks to himself, wondering "Now what if we undid this madness?", ending the film.