Lady of Steel or fraud? Chintya Candranaya

Chintya Candranaya is a well known Pencak Silat practitioner from Indonesia with over a million followers on YouTube. She comes from the Pencak Silat Harimau Utara school from Lampung, located on the southern tip of the island of Sumatra. She was taught by Master Agus of Harimau Utara. She is now 25 years old (in 2021) and is known for kicking metal gas cylinders, punching and kicking hard concrete, and other extreme actions done with her bare hands.

She began studying Pencak Silat from the early age of 7 years old. More recently, she stars in her own low-budget films that debut on her youtube channel. Chintya is one of the actors in the film Benyamin Biang Kerok directed by Hanung Bramantyo Baca.

Recently she has been the center of controversy in her use of video effects to perform some her feats. Chintya Candranaya, as yet to admit that her videos are merely fabrications or appear to the public with proof and be witnessed other trained martial arts.

Here are some videos created in response to how her videos were created.

In August 2020, a group of martial artists which included MMA fighters and well known Pencak Silat practitioners gathered to demand that she perform some of these superhuman feats in front of the camera. The story is detailed in this video.

In recent videos, her team released live video of her doing some of the stunts. Videos lately consist of her and Master Agus focusing on techniques and training, rather than supernatural abilities. She is without doubt a talented martial artist with a decent video editing team. Chintya insists that her videos are not edited but rather made after much trial and error.

However, despite the obvious dupery, for a woman martial artist to reach her level of fame and talent is definitely commendable. We hope that she continues training Pencak Silat with the same enthusiasm, just without the doctored videos.

Article updated March 3rd 2021