General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 202611 min read

Laskar Pelangi

Laskar Pelangi ("The Rainbow Troops") is an Indonesian story of ten poor students and their two teachers at a Muhammadiyah primary school on Belitung island, first told in Andrea Hirata's 2005 debut novel and adapted into a 2008 feature film of the same name directed by Riri Riza. The novel, published by Bentang Pustaka in Yogyakarta, is the first book of a tetralogy continued in Sang Pemimpi, Edensor, and Maryamah Karpov.¹ The film became one of the most widely seen Indonesian movies, with 4,719,453 recorded admissions.²

Key fact	Detail
Novel	First novel by Andrea Hirata, published 2005 by Bentang Pustaka, Yogyakarta; first of four books; reprinted 14 times between September 2005 and November 2007¹
Film	Released 25 September 2008; directed by Riri Riza, produced by Mira Lesmana; Miles Films and Mizan Production; 120 minutes²
Setting	SD Muhammadiyah in the village of Gantong, Belitong, in the 1970s; the school stays open only when a tenth student, Harun, enrolls on the first day³
Principal cast	Cut Mini (Bu Muslimah), Ikranagara (Pak Harfan), Lukman Sardi (adult Ikal), Ario Bayu (adult Lintang)²
International title	The Rainbow Troops³
Reach	Novel translated into 26 foreign languages as of 2011⁴

Spoilers

Plot

Gantong, a village on Belitung, 1970s. The island's economy is tin and its social order is tin too: the children of company officials attend a gleaming colonial-built school, while the children of miners and fishermen are left with the Muhammadiyah school, a rotting wooden building with a leaking roof and a staff of two aging teachers. On the first morning of term, the headmaster, Pak Harfan (Ikranagara), and the young teacher Bu Muslimah (Cut Mini Theo) wait for students who may never come. Only nine arrive, and the rules say ten or nothing. Then Harun, an older boy with an intellectual disability, wanders in, and the school lives by a margin of one child.

The class names itself Laskar Pelangi, the Rainbow Troops, and the film follows them through years of primary school, narrated by Ikal (Zulfani), a fisherman's son. His best friend is Lintang (Ferdian), a boy from a fishing village so remote that he cycles for hours each way, past crocodile territory, just to attend. Lintang turns out to be the finest mathematical mind in the class, and the film's first great surge comes when he out-thinks the students of the rich company school. Around them gather the rest of the rainbow: Mahar (Verrys Yamarno), the strange, artistic one whose ideas bewilder the others; Sahara, the lone girl who refuses to be pushed out; Kucai, the self-appointed class president; and Syahdan, Borek, A Kiong, Trapani, and Harun.

The children catch fish in flooded fields and sit through lessons under a roof held together by rope. Bu Muslimah improvises constantly, because the school is poor in everything except conviction. The pressure underneath the sweetness never lets up: the school could still close, any child could be pulled out to work, and every small victory is a victory against that arithmetic.

The film's centerpiece is the Independence Day carnival, which Mahar's troupe nearly loses before it begins. The school committee finds the troupe's traditional Melayu performance embarrassing and moves to cancel it, one more insult Mahar has absorbed all film long from classmates who think he is a fool. The children go anyway, and when their costumes fall through, Mahar turns ordinary leaves, gathered from the trees around them, into elaborate costumes. The troop takes the stage in green and wins the entire carnival outright. The sequence lands because the film has spent an hour letting Mahar be dismissed and underestimated; the poorest school in Gantong produces the ingenuity the privileged school cannot match, and the adults who should have protected it almost smothered it. Then the victory folds straight back into ordinary life: a certificate, a moment of pride, and lessons the next morning.

The sadder beats follow. Lintang, the boy with the most brilliant mind in the class, loses his father, and the family needs him at sea; he leaves school, and the film gives the moment no villain and no consolation, only the arithmetic of poverty deciding which children get to keep studying. Later, a transfer student named Flo arrives from Kalimantan, reopening the class's world and stirring Ikal's first, painfully shy flicker of romance. When Ikal's heart is broken, Mahar sings the Melayu song "Bunga Seroja" to the class.¹⁸

The ending sends Ikal off the island: he wins a scholarship to university abroad, the fruit of Bu Muslimah's insistence and Lintang's example as much as his own talent. The film closes not on the boy but on the school, still standing, its teachers still waiting at the door, the institution outlasting any single student.

Characters

Ikal (Zulfani) is the narrator and the audience's eyes, a fisherman's son with a soft heart and a habit of falling for girls he cannot talk to. Lintang (Ferdian) is his best friend and the class's genius, a boy who pedals miles past crocodiles for the chance to solve a problem, and whose departure is the film's hardest blow. Mahar (Verrys Yamarno) is the eccentric artist of the group, mocked by his classmates and vindicated by the carnival; critics and audiences have made him the film's beloved wild card. Bu Muslimah (Cut Mini Theo) is the young teacher whose patience and improvisation are the school's real infrastructure, treating Harun's disability as part of the class rather than a problem in it. Pak Harfan (Ikranagara) is the elderly headmaster who guards the school's soul and its ten-student rule. Harun is the quiet older boy whose late arrival on the first morning saves everything. The adult cast also includes Slamet Rahardjo, Mathias Muchus, Tora Sudiro as a fellow teacher, and Ario Bayu, whose supporting turn won an award.¹⁹

Interpretations and controversies

The film's enormous popularity has invited some revisionist reading. A retrospective critique argues that the film, faithful to the novel's episodic shape, spends its depth on Ikal, Lintang, and Mahar and leaves the other members of the Rainbow Troops as little more than appendages, and that Tora Sudiro's teacher character is superfluous; it also notes the adaptation swapped Mahar's song "Tennessee Waltz" from the novel for the Melayu "Bunga Seroja" to deepen the regional flavor and the heartbreak.¹⁸ A Western critic flagged a confusing dream sequence and some on-the-nose digital effects as the film's technical low points, while judging the screenplay and the child acting its strengths.²⁰ The scholarship ending is sometimes read as wish fulfillment, though the novel frames it as memory rather than inevitability.

The novel

Andrea Hirata wrote Laskar Pelangi in 2005 based on his own experiences as a child in Kampung Gantong on Belitong (Belitung), in what is now Bangka-Belitung province.⁵ The book sold more than 500,000 copies and became a bestseller in both Indonesia and Malaysia; within two years of publication it had been reprinted fourteen times.¹^•⁵

The story opens with the near-closure of the SD Muhammadiyah school: registration closes with only nine students, and the school will be shut unless ten enroll. At the last moment Harun, a boy who walks with a limp, is brought by his mother to register, and the school survives.¹ Their teacher names the group "Laskar Pelangi" because of the children's fondness for rainbows.¹ Hirata dedicated the book to his teacher Ibu Muslimah Hapsari, to Pak Harfan Effendi Noor, and to the ten childhood friends who appear as its characters.¹

The novel follows the group's school years, including Mahar's carnival victory on 17 August and the brilliance of Lintang, nicknamed "si Einstein Cilik" (the little Einstein), who wins an interschool quiz against the challenge of Drs. Zulfikar, a wealthy civil servant. It ends with the death of Lintang's father, which forces the gifted boy to leave school and take up his father's work as a fisherman, and with Ikal's return to his village twelve years later holding a university degree.¹

The film adaptation

Three weeks after the novel's launch, directors and producers were offering Hirata billions of rupiah for the film rights; he turned them down because, in his account, they did not understand the book, and instead chose Riri Riza as director and Mira Lesmana as producer.⁶ "This is not a children's book, but a book about children," Hirata said, describing it as an irony about the lack of access to education for children on one of the world's wealthiest islands.⁶

Production. The film was shot on Belitung island over 40 days, involving 12 local actors, at a reported cost of Rp 8 billion.⁵ The screenplay was written by Salman Aristo with Riri Riza and Mira Lesmana; the score was composed by Aksan Sjuman and Titi Rajo Bintang, with cinematography by Yadi Sugandi.⁷ All filming took place on Belitong, and the dialogue includes the Belitong Malay language alongside Indonesian.⁸ Hirata received the complete script only at its eleventh draft, and said he wept at the trailer.⁸^•⁶

Story and cast. Set beginning in 1974, the film follows Ikal, a native Belitong boy, through registration at SD Muhammadiyah Gantong and five years of schooling under Bu Muslimah (Cut Mini) and Pak Harfan (Ikranagara). Ikal (Zulfani), Lintang (Ferdian), and Mahar (Verrys Yamarno) emerge as the group's driving talents; the adult Ikal is played by Lukman Sardi and the adult Lintang by Ario Bayu.³^•² The ten child members of the group were played by children from Belitong.⁸

Changes from the novel. Studies of the adaptation record that the film adds a scene of Pak Harfan's death, omits the episode of Trapani and his mother receiving treatment at Zaal Batu, and drops the character Drs. Zulfikar while introducing new characters Pak Mahmud, Pak Zulkarnaen, and Pak Bakri.⁹ The ending differs most sharply: the novel depicts Lintang's later life as tragic, living alone, poor and thin, working as a truck driver, while the film shows him doing well, in a worn white shirt with one child.¹⁰ Scenes such as the carnival, the quiz competition, the school's dance performance, and Mahar and Flo's journey to Lanun Island were judged by some readers to translate the novel's detail less successfully.¹⁰ A study of the adaptation found a strong synergy between the novel's author and the film's director, screenwriter, and producer, while concluding that the film stands as a visual art distinct from the novel it adapts.¹¹

Reception and awards

The film opened in Jakarta on roughly 25 screens, many with full houses, and cinemas added screens the following day, nearly doubling its initial coverage.¹² Critics praised Riza's retention of the book's humor and pathos, the score by the married couple Aksan and Titi Sjuman, and the ending built around the interschool competition, capped by a theme song from the band Nidji.¹²

At the Indonesian Movie Awards 2009 the film won Most Favorite Film, Most Favorite Soundtrack, Best New Comer Actor, Most Favorite Actress, Most Favorite Actor, and Best Supporting Actor; it also took the Best Actress Award at the 36th Brussels International Independent Film Festival 2009 and the Best Picture Award at the Asia Pacific Film Festival 2009 in Taiwan.¹³ A sequel, Sang Pemimpi, followed in 2009, also directed by Riri Riza.¹⁴

Cultural impact

Tourism. The novel and film are credited with putting Belitung, previously known mainly for tin mining, on the tourism map.⁴ Research on film-induced tourism found that the film strongly shaped a positive destination image of Belitung through its coastal scenery and story, and that demand to visit filming locations was high.¹⁵

Other adaptations. Hirata approved a 15-episode SCTV television miniseries in 2011, reversing his earlier refusal to allow a soap-opera version.⁴ A stage musical ran at Taman Ismail Marzuki in Jakarta from 17 December 2010 to 9 January 2011, and the musical also played at The Esplanade in Singapore.¹³^•⁴ By 2011 the novel had been translated into 26 foreign languages.⁴

Critical reading. Scholars have read the work as social criticism of Indonesian education: analyses identify educational inequality in limited teachers, facilities, and access; socio-economic inequality among the children's families; and a contrast between the island's tin wealth and the poverty of its villages.¹⁶^•⁶ A semiotic study of the film's teachers found it constructs the myth of the "teacher as selfless hero," encoded through symbols of sacrifice and material limitation.¹⁷

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Adaptations of literature, stage, and other media › Adaptations of non-English-language literature

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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