The Siege at Thorn High 2025

The film opens with a stark flashback to the May 1998 racial riots in Jakarta, a period marked by economic strain and widespread corruption that fed brutal violence against the ethnic Chinese community. This history casts a long shadow over the present, where memory and trauma shape the choices of those trying to live ordinary lives amid upheaval.

In 2009, at a Jakarta senior high school, Panca Emir Mahira tries to deliver a love letter to Silvi Lia Lukman through her younger brother, Edwin Morgan Oey. Silvi confronts them herself, asking Panca to confess his feelings directly, neither accepting nor rejecting him. During class, a teacher orders everyone to go home as riots surge in the city. On their way, Silvi and Edwin’s public bus is halted by a mob; Silvi is seized by a group and raped. Panca’s efforts to intervene fail, Edwin is beaten, and after regaining consciousness Edwin returns home only to find his house in flames.

By 2027, Indonesia remains a perilous landscape where discrimination against ethnic Chinese runs deep. Edwin, now an adult who was raised by Silvi, works as a senior high school substitute teacher. Before her death, Silvi had entrusted him with the task of locating her child, who was born from the assault seventeen years earlier. After stints at five different high schools, Edwin applies for a position at Bukit Duri Senior High School, infamous for its unruly students. On his first day as the homeroom teacher of Class 3F, the students greet him with hostility; one pupil, Jefri Omara N. Esteghlal, throws a piece of wood at him. Edwin’s path crosses with Diana Hana Malasan, a staff member at the school, and they begin to form a cautious connection.

A gang of Bukit Duri students led by Jefri harasses classmates of ethnic Chinese heritage. Edwin intervenes when he sees an assault on Kristo Endy Arfian in Jakarta’s Chinatown. In class, Edwin spots Kristo’s drawing talent and clashes with Jefri, who resists the assigned task. Jefri’s gang later abducts someone and confines them in an abandoned building. That night, Edwin joins Diana at a bar frequented by ethnic Chinese patrons; after seeing Diana home, he is attacked by a masked knife-wielding man, but he fights back and wounds the attacker—the culprit is revealed to be Jefri.

The following day, Jefri is called before the school principal and expelled for the assault on Edwin. In preparation for Indonesia’s Independence Day, Edwin asks Kristo to help decorate the school during the holiday. Riots surge again on that day, echoing the earlier violence. Jefri’s gang arrives armed and the group—Edwin, Diana, Kristo, and Rangga—take shelter in the school auditorium. Rangga’s father is allowed inside by Jefri’s gang, but he is attacked and beaten while Rangga’s safety is threatened. Gerry Dewa Dayana tortures Rangga’s father, and Edwin negotiates to allow Rangga and his father to leave; Rangga and his father do escape briefly but are ultimately captured. Gerry then tortures Rangga, and Rangga dies while trying to flee.

Edwin later reveals that his motivation for becoming a teacher at Bukit Duri is to find his nephew. He enters the ventilation shaft above the auditorium restroom to disable a security signal jammer in the security room. Elsewhere, Jefri brutally murders Sim Florian Rutters when he goes to the restroom. Gerry uses a blowtorch to breach the auditorium door, forcing Kristo and Diana to escape through the same ventilation shaft Edwin used earlier. Edwin manages to subdue Reihan and Anto and inadvertently causes Gerry to fall to his death during a confrontation. In the laboratory, Kristo reveals that he is not Edwin’s nephew; he knows his biological parents and was born in Malaysia. Edwin then confronts Jefri in a final confrontation and incapacitates him.

Culap Raihan Khan, Jay Farandika, and Dotty Satine Zaneta arrive, but they refuse to aid Jefri and ultimately retreat, choosing to leave Jefri and Edwin behind. Jefri is killed, and a mob storms the school, looting its contents. As Edwin exits, a video provided by Kristo reveals Jefri’s deep-seated hatred toward ethnic Chinese stemming from his own rape seventeen years earlier. Edwin narrowly escapes the oncoming mob by climbing into a car driven by Panca, while elsewhere a child discovers and frees a captive who had been held by Jefri’s gang. The film closes with a hard look at the cycles of prejudice and violence that continue to gnaw at a society haunted by its own history.