The White Rajah of Sarawak: A Story That Had to Be Made Here

Sarawak's first animated musical feature film has entered production. This is the story behind it — and why every frame has to come from here.

It started in a quiet restaurant in Taipei, just before Christmas last year.

A song came on — and I was back in 2017, in a school auditorium in Kuching, watching a stage musical I had spent three days filming.

The White Rajah of Sarawak, the original production by St Joseph's Family of Schools. When the curtain fell on the final night, the audience rose to its feet, and the applause didn't stop. I saw something I had never seen so clearly before: a pride that belonged to Sarawak.

A voice rose in me then — this deserves a bigger stage. For years, that voice stayed quiet. The song in Taipei brought it back, and with it a question I'd been carrying longer than I realised.

A story Sarawak has waited decades to see

On 5 May 2026, that question became something official. At the Borneo Cultures Museum, Motion Foundry signed a Memorandum of Understanding with St Joseph's Private Education Berhad — formalising the production of The White Rajah of Sarawak, the state's first-ever animated musical feature film.

Led by executive producer Amy Khiu and animation director Siew Chung Lee, the 75-minute feature is adapted from the original stage musical first staged in 2017, written by former teacher and principal Father Alvin Ng, with a score by music director Benedict Lo that gave the story its first life. It traces James Brooke's arrival in Borneo, his appointment as Rajah of Sarawak in 1841, and his relationships with the Dayak, Malay, and Chinese communities who built this place.

Witnessing the signing were Jason Brooke — Director of Brooke Museums and the Brooke Trust, and a sixth-generation descendant of the dynasty whose history inspired the film — and Gregory Wee, board member of the National Film Development Corporation Malaysia (FINAS), representing FINAS Sarawak. With them in the room, the moment was clear: this is a chance for Sarawak, and for Malaysian animation, to claim its own space.

The White Rajah of Sarawak arrives in cinemas on 22 July 2028 — Sarawak Day.

The White Rajah of Sarawak — at a glance

• Sarawak's first animated musical feature film

• Studio: Motion Foundry (Kuching, Sarawak)

• Executive producer: Amy Khiu

• Animation director: Siew Chung Lee

• Adapted from the 2017 stage musical by St Joseph's Family of Schools (written by Father Alvin Ng; score by Benedict Lo)

• Runtime: 75 minutes

• In cinemas: 22 July 2028 (Sarawak Day)

• Production partner: BorneoTalk

Why this story, and why now

We grow up in Sarawak listening to other people's music and watching other people's films. The cultural current flows one way — from the outside, into us.

Watch a Studio Ghibli film and you feel Japan in every frame: the brushwork, the score, the rhythm of a quiet scene. That is what cultural output looks like — a place rendered so completely that you don't just see it, you feel it.

I don't want The White Rajah of Sarawak to look like Ghibli. I don't want it to feel like anywhere else. Every choice — the way a character moves, the colour of a sunset over a longhouse, the texture of the music, the cadence of a voice — has to come from here. From this land. From us.

What we are really casting into the film

Maybe you're in a coffee shop in Kuching right now. Look around. The people beside you come from different communities, different faiths, different mother tongues — and yet here you all are, sharing the same morning. Someone catches your eye. They smile. It's so ordinary here that we forget how extraordinary it is.

That is what we are casting into this film. Not the Brooke dynasty — but the quiet harmony, the everyday grace, the inheritance of many peoples becoming one home.

On the surface, The White Rajah of Sarawak is the story of an Englishman. But that is not the story we are really telling. By the time the lights come up, we hope every Sarawakian leaves the cinema carrying a single question: Who are we? And why are we who we are?

The road to 2028

Production is now underway — led by Motion Foundry as Sarawak's own animation studio, with BorneoTalk joining as project partner as part of its 20th anniversary.

It builds on the culturally-rooted animation we have been making for years — from the folklore short Majau: The Harvest Tale to the award-winning Kumang and the Ungrateful Python — now carried to feature length. The film will be made here, with Sarawakian talent and Sarawakian voices, in a story whose every frame is meant to belong to this place.

Some stories don't begin in boardrooms. They begin in quiet rooms — with a song that takes you back, applause you can still hear years later, and a question that won't let you sleep.

This is one of them. And we are honoured to be the ones casting it into light.

Forged in Borneo. Cast into Story.

Alex Bong is the Founder and Creative Director of Motion Foundry, a video and animation studio based in Kuching, Sarawak. For collaboration, partnership, or media enquiries about The White Rajah of Sarawak, get in touch.