While alone, Kadir thinks of the crimes committed by the military that he has witnessed, including the killings of unarmed women and children, as well as the execution of the wrongfully incarcerated.

According to the film's director Garin Nugroho, he wrote Puisi Tak Terkuburkan to "reinterpret the wounds of history"[A] after being offered Rp 60 million (US$7,000) to write a script after finishing Daun di Atas Bantal.

At the time, he intended to make three films: one regarding Aceh, one regarding Papua, and one about the youth movement, choosing areas of potential conflict.

[1] Anne Rutherford, a senior lecturer on cinema studies at the University of Western Sydney, notes that Puisi Tak Terkuburkan was the first Indonesian movie to discuss the 1965–1966 communist purge.

Nugroho said that it was not meant to be commercial, and that he only planned to show it for several days at higher-class theatres before selling it to local television stations.

[2] In February 2005, Nugroho showed the film to raise money to help the Acehnese survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.