MY NAME IS NOT AMY

On December 30, 2021, the worst wildfire in Colorado history rages through filmmaker Dewi Sungai’s community. A fire has been raging inside Dewi, too. Born to a young single mother on Indonesian soil, Dewi was adopted by white American parents as an infant, renamed “Amy,” and raised in white suburbia in the U.S.— a story her parents framed as a simple, happy story. But Dewi is noticing the cracks in their narrative, and realizes she is not, and never has been, a daughter who fits their worldview.

Driven by a deep sense of loss of her culture, family, and land, Dewi discovers and reclaims her birth name, builds community with other transracial adoptees, and begins excavating stories from her Native Bornean ancestry. It pushes her relationship with her 83-year-old adoptive mother to the brink.

Weaving memory with present-day verité, visual metaphor, and an uprising of transracial adoptee voices with the visceral music of Hatis Noit and Kevin Richard Martin, this film belongs to a collection of shorts exploring indigeneity lost, then reclaimed, as Dewi and others correct the narratives of their past and seek ancestral knowledge critical to an Indigenous Future.

To learn more about the film, visit https://www.mynameisnotamy.com/