The Siege at Thorn High (2025) on Netflix
NR20251h 58mActionCrimeDramaThriller
Edwin promised his dying sister he would find the son she gave up. He becomes a substitute teacher at Bukit Duri Senior High School, searching for his nephew. The students are hostile.
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- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.4/102,914 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
In 2027, Indonesia is still unstable, and anti-Chinese discrimination remains widespread. Edwin, a Chinese-Indonesian teacher, takes a substitute post at Bukit Duri Senior High School while quietly looking for the son his late sister Silvi gave up. The school has a reputation for unruly students. Years earlier, Silvi was abducted during unrest and later raised Edwin alone. Before she died, she asked him to find the child from that attack. The students are hostile, above all Jefri, who leads a group that targets ethnic Chinese classmates. When Edwin steps in to stop an attack on a student called Kristo, tempers rise, and Jefri assaults him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Siege at Thorn High (2025)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Joko Anwar completed the screenplay in 2008 but deliberately postponed the film, hoping Indonesia's social climate would improve; in 2024 he and co-writer Tia Hasibuan decided the country had not changed, so they went ahead. Anwar said that seventeen years after they wrote the script, Indonesia still struggles with the same issues.
- The film's opening is built on the real May 1998 racial riots in Jakarta, when ethnic Chinese communities were violently targeted amid economic turmoil.
- The Siege at Thorn High was Joko Anwar's first non-horror film since 2019, his first collaboration with an American studio, and his first time working with lead actor Morgan Oey.
