'Enjoy Your Stay' Reaches Indonesia, Speaking for Migrant Workers

Indonesian distributor Falcon has acquired "Enjoy Your Stay," the Swiss labor exploitation drama that premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February, and the film now has its Indonesian premiere at Jakarta World Cinema.

The film comes from "Goliath" director Dominik Locher and Filipino filmmaker Honeylyn Joy Alipio, who co-wrote and co-directed. It follows Luz, an undocumented Filipina cleaner at a Swiss luxury ski resort, played by Mercedes Cabral. Alexis Manenti also stars. Close Up Films produced, JBA Production co-produced and Be For Films handles sales.

The Indonesian release carries a specific weight for the directors. During research, they encountered accounts of Indonesian workers in Swiss nail salons. "That's even the worst situation in some cases, and we were really hoping that this movie could also speak for Indonesian people," Locher told Variety.

What drives the story?

Luz may lose custody of her children to her husband back home. To prevent that, she works extra shifts and, lured by a legal document and higher pay promised by a Swiss gangmaster, becomes a labor trafficker herself. The promise collapses. Locher calls the world the film exposes "the dirty side of the Swiss postcard."

The directors first met at the Busan International Film Festival. When Locher set out to tell a story about "people who live in the shadow of Switzerland," he contacted Alipio, who agreed to collaborate. Alipio trained under Filipino artist Armando "Bing" Lao and works with his "found story" method, which merges real-life cases into fiction. The pair researched on site at Swiss luxury resorts, speaking with undocumented workers from Serbia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

Alipio has faced the assumptions embedded in the story. One of Locher's neighbors once asked whether she was his cleaner. Locher corrected the neighbor: she was his colleague.

"As a Filipina, I cannot help but feel sadness and shame. I do not want the Filipinas to be portrayed as cleaners, but that is our reality. It was a hard pill to swallow," Alipio told Variety. She still finds the partnership meaningful, because she and Locher represent the two countries in the story and together amplify the voices within it.

It was Alipio, Locher says, who insisted from the start that Luz not be reduced to a victim because she is undocumented, "because she must be a very ambitious woman. Otherwise she would never be in Switzerland." That ambition tests her loyalty to her Filipino colleagues, who support each other like sisters.

How have audiences responded?

After the Berlin world premiere in February, the film had its Asian premiere at the Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival, where the filmmakers held a panel with an organization supporting undocumented workers. In Switzerland, where the film screens publicly on November 22, Locher and Alipio organized a special screening exclusively for undocumented workers. The screenings were fully booked and drew strong responses from Filipino viewers, many of whom said the film captured their reality.

"We hoped that [it] would be a movie [people] enjoy watching, but also a movie that stirs up discussions on how to treat one another," Locher said. Alipio, he adds, once said she hopes that in 50 years the story the film tells will no longer happen in real life.

What comes next?

The pair's next project, "Partner Zone," first reported by Variety in February, follows a Swiss ESG (environmental, social and governance) auditor to the Philippines to examine a gold mine. Switzerland refines 50%-70% of the world's annual gold supply.

"Dom and I have already established a working dynamic. We have an ambition to create more films dedicated to the world's marginalized people," Alipio said. The duo remain at the research stage and plan to begin scripting in 2027, with 90% of the shoot set for the Philippines and the remainder in Geneva.