Capturing the last sounds of a rainforest.

That’s how the Pulitzer Center describes this beautifully captured 18-minute short documentary about how an indigenous community and a team of scientists are racing to capture the sounds of a tropical rainforest in Borneo before it disappears to make way for Nusantara, Indonesia’s new capital. From that description:

Indonesia’s current capital, Jakarta, is the world’s fastest sinking city. Former President Joko Widodo staked his legacy on relocating the capital to Nusantara by 2045. It’s a carefully designed, carbon-neutral metropolis twice the size of New York City nestled in the Bornean rainforest.

Using bioacoustics and collaborating with local communities, the documentary reveals how sound can preserve stories of biodiversity, culture, ancestral knowledge, and deep connections to the forest—as construction transforms one of the world’s most biodiverse rainforests.