Yandy Laurens never anticipated that his web series would one day become an Academy Awards contender.
The Indonesian filmmaker started "Sore: Wife from the Future" (or "Sore: Istri dari Masa Depan") as a project, which gained popularity upon its 2017 release.
Now, Laurens has reimagined his web series as a full-length film, submitted as an International Feature entry for the Academy Awards.
While the core story remains similar to the original, Laurens and producer Suryana Paramita explained during a recent interview with TheWrap's Steve Pond that the adaptation takes a different direction.
"I am very interested in the story that Yandy brought eight years ago," Paramita said.
"He shared his point-of-view about marriage when he was a single man, and now he's married and has two kids, and he has a new perspective on marriage and wants to share his point-of-view in a deeper meaning."
"Sore: Wife from the Future" follows the title character as she travels back in time to convince her eventual husband, Jonathan (Dion Wiyoko), to change his life's course and prevent tragedy.
Sheila Dara Aisha plays Sore, taking over the role from web series actor Tika Bravani.
After watching the series religiously in the 2010s, Aisha felt honored to be part of this cinematic remake.
As someone who truly adored Bravani and thought she was lovely in the web series, Aisha also appreciated the chance to do something unique with this new interpretation.
"I saw the script and realized how different it is from the web series, so I decided to be true to the script, trying to really empathize with Sore's character in the film," she said.
"I feel like Sore in the movie becomes a different entity than the one in the web series."
Yet, even as a fan of the source material, Aisha's performance did not come without difficulties.
The actress said she found it challenging to connect with her protagonist, a woman who becomes trapped in a time loop as she repeatedly tries to save her husband, despite his flaws.
"I had a really hard time connecting to the character," Aisha said with a laugh.
"How does a human have love this great for her husband? But after lots of discussion, we also tried to find real-life cases that related to Sore's character, and we found out maybe it's not just love. Of course, the love is so great, but, you know, just like humans in real life, these characters have layers. It's not just love. Maybe there's grief—she lost her husband—but then also maybe there's obsession. Trying to find those layers is actually quite fun, and we finally found all of the missing pieces, and we finally found Sore's character as a whole."
Laurens similarly felt the pieces of the puzzle assemble in new ways as he revamped his old work.
No longer a single man approaching this story through expert advice and learning from books, the writer-director came at "Sore" from a fresh angle, as his own experiences with marriage and fatherhood made the piece's themes more resonant.
"I found that if somebody loves you unconditionally, it is a chance to grow up without judgment," Laurens said.
"It's like a second opportunity to feel love unconditionally. Of course, the first one—when we are still kids, our parents love us unconditionally—and then we get that second chance to feel that love when we get married."
"Sore" finds itself among a tradition of time-travel cinema, and an even more specific subgenre of time-loop romances.
While Laurens noted that he hadn't seen "Groundhog Day" before adding his own entry to the list, he did say that fantasy, sci-fi, and temporally irregular films like Jeffrey Lau's "A Chinese Odyssey," Christopher Nolan's "Inception," and Akira Kurosawa's "Rashomon" were influences on his work.
"That's why I love the fantasy genre: it's like an invitation for a very unique trip to see a possibility that will not happen in our life," he said.
"We go really far, but at the end we... understand ourselves more."
Paramita expressed some hesitation at making a large-scale fantasy film, knowing that genre films typically don't perform well in her home country.
However, the response was overwhelmingly positive, with "Sore: Wife from the Future" ranking among the five highest-grossing films of 2025 in Indonesia. Recognition as the country's official Academy Awards entry was all the more rewarding.
"We are very grateful," the producer said.
"We are very excited to have this experience, showing our film to U.S. audiences, and hopefully the experience will be good for the U.S. audience too."
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