Christine Hakim is an Indonesian actress, film producer, and activist. She is one of the most experienced and respected figures in the South East Asian film industry. Christine has been described as the "grande dame of Indonesian cinema" as well as "Indonesia's foremost actress". She has been involved in the film world, as an actress, for more than 45 years and had her first Hollywood experience playing alongside Julia Roberts in Eat Pray Love.
As an actress she has won numerous Best Actress awards for her work in Indonesian cinema and many more awards in Europe and Asia. She has served on film juries for festivals worldwide, including Shanghai, Tokyo, Hawaii, Asia Pacific Film Festival, Sydney, Singapore, Cambodia and Fukoama, and was a member of the Festival de Cannes Jury in 2002. She has also received a lifetime achievement awards at the Cinemanila International Film Festival 2003, Festival du Film in Deauville 2005 and at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards In Sydney 2010. As a film producer, Christine has produced numerous films some of which had been selected for the Un Certain Regard section of the prestigious Cannes Festival. She has also won the Special Jury Prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival, Best Film at the Asia Pacific Film Festival and Grand Prize at the Cinemanila International Film Festival. Christine’s work is particularly well known in France and Japan, and comprehensive retrospectives of her films have been screened at the Deauville Film Festival in France and Iwanami Hall in Tokyo. Other than films, Christine has also produced a number of documentaries.
Christine became an activist in 2000s with focus on education. She played an active role in raising public awareness on educational issues such as the upgrading of teachers’ status and misconception regarding autism among students. She later created the Christine Hakim Foundation to consolidate her work, engaging in fund-raising and advocacy events which was initiated to assist underprivileged Indonesian children and extend financial assistance to local teachers in remote areas. In 2004, she was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Indonesia and since 2008 she began working on behalf of UNESCO as Goodwill Ambassador for ASEAN and Timor Leste to help promote education, push for education reforms in Indonesia, and promote disaster relief programs.
For her dedication to the film industry, Christine has received numerous Indonesia recognitions from Presidents as well as many international acknowledgements including the French Chevalier de l'ordre des Art et Des Lettres (1993) and Commandeur dans l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2003), the Japanese Yamamoto Yasue Award (2002) and 7th Nikkei Asia Prize winner for cultural category (2003), Jahwarnal Nehru from India government (1993), Asian Heroes Award by Time Magazine-Asia (2003), and Lifetime Achievement Awards from Japan, France, Philippines and Australia. For her diplomatic efforts between Indonesia and Japan she received from the Japanese Emperor, The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays (2015).
