Searching for the Pangazou: How I Wrote "The Headhunters"

The language of my people is dying. It is a language of spoken stories. One of those stories has stayed with me since I was nine, when I first heard it — and when I first saw the forty-two human heads that its protagonist, a heroic headhunter-turned-villain, left us. Those heads are still strung to a roof in Sabah, Malaysia.

This is a story about that story, about why and how I’ve been working to put it to screen, and why it must feature the Kadazan language.

I hope this will suffice as an introduction to myself and my people.