Prima Rusdi

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Prima Rusdi (born 31 January 1967) is an Indonesian screenwriter and writer.

Rusdi was born in Göttingen, Germany and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia. She has a Master's degree in Communications from University of Canberra (Australia), and initially wanted to become a journalist. She began her career as a writer in 2000 after quitting her job as a copywriter with a multinational advertising agency. She won several top advertising awards during her career as a copywriter. She co-wrote her first film Eliana, Eliana (2002) with director Riri Riza during which she also co-wrote What's Up with Love? (2001) with Jujur Prananto. In 2004, Rusdi won two awards from Festival Film Indonesia for Eliana, Eliana (shared with director Riri Riza) and for a teleplay called The Big Celebration. Both Eliana and The Big Celebration were produced by Miles Films, a production house that Prima considers as her 'film school'. In 2005 she co-wrote Waking Banyu with writer Rayya Makarim, and in 2006 she wrote Garasi, a coming-of-age film produced by What's with Love producer, Mira Lesmana. Garasi is a directorial debut from Agung Sentausa, a close friend of Prima's who also received his film training from Miles Films.

Throughout 2006, Rusdi was one of the mentors for a series of film workshops conducted for students/teenagers, including a group of young detainees at a juvenille correctional center located in Jakarta. She continues doing these kind of activities for her interests and her belief in the importance of encouraging the young people to practice their rights of freedom of expressions. She also worked with Malaysian stage director/writer Ann Lee adapting Lee's script, "Hang Li Poh" into Indonesian (this project is still in progress but a chapter that has been adapted were being performed during The International Women Playwrights Conferense, November 2006). Later that year, Prima Rusdi was one of the programmers (along side short filmmaker Farishad Latjuba, documentary filmmaker Alex Sihar, and artist Ade Darmawan) for the first Southeast Asian Short Film Competitions held in Jakarta. She was nominated at Festival Film Indonesia 2006 for her screenplay "Garasi".

In January 2007, Prima Rusdi, along with about 300 filmmakers including Mira Lesmana, Riri Riza, Nia Dinata, etc, returned their awards from the Festival Film Indonesia (a long running governement funded film festival) to the Minister of Arts and Culture as a mark to protest the Indonesian government for the lack of support and transparancy and a series of restrictive policies those are still applied and affected the Indonesian film industry. This movement is known as MFI (Masyarakat Film Indonesia) or Indonesian Film Society Movement.

Prima Rusdi also writes short stories and articles in various publications. She was a contributor for CosmoGirl! Indonesia between 2002-2004. In 2005, she had her first book, The Journey, published by Terrant Books. Her second book, 1095 Magical Days was published by KATAKITA in 2006. She is currently in the process of completing some scripts.