In 1962 Hong Kong, neighbors Su Li-zhen (Mrs. Chan) and Chow Mo-wan (Mr. Chow) discover their spouses are having an affair. As they spend time together, they develop feelings for each other, but their relationship remains chaste and unspoken, reflecting societal constraints and their own moral compass.
Five troubled teens, abandoned by society and family, form a bond in a world of violence, drugs, and self-destruction, facing harsh realities of modern Singapore.
In Singapore, a private detective and the British authorities are on the trail of a crime syndicate that kidnaps a nuclear physicist with the aim of selling him to the highest bidder.
When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison. Among the American prisoners is Cpl. King, a wheeler-dealer who has managed to establish a pretty good life for himself in the camp. King soon forms a friendship with an upper-class British officer who is fascinated with King's enthusiastic approach to life.
A single dad looks to give up drinking and his bartender job in order to impress his son and find work as a magician.
Keen young Raymold Avila joins the Internal Affairs Department of the Los Angeles police. He and partner Amy Wallace are soon looking closely at the activities of cop Dennis Peck whose financial holdings start to suggest something shady. Indeed Peck is involved in any number of dubious or downright criminal activities. He is also devious, a womaniser, and a clever manipulator, and he starts to turn his attention on Avila.
Im Luxuszug durch das Herz Asiens
Singapore GaGa is a 55-minute paean to the quirkiness of the Singaporean aural landscape. It reveals Singapore's past and present with a delight and humour that makes it a necessary film for all Singaporeans. We hear buskers, street vendors, school cheerleaders sing hymns to themselves and to their communities. From these vocabularies (including Arabic, Latin, Hainanese), a sense of what it might mean to be a modern Singaporean emerges. This is Singapore's first documentary to have a cinema release. With English and Chinese subtitles.
"When I first started to photograph in dark and unfamiliar places all over Singapore in 2003, I had no idea that those images I made would come to define me as a photographer. Born out of a curiosity of the unknown, as well as a young photographer’s restlessness, While You Were Sleeping grew to say as much about our country as it did of me. Eighteen years, two books and two exhibitions later, Singapore is now a very different place. Many of the locations I visited in the early 2000s, once alien, are now completely transformed." – Darren Soh, photographer
A fallen woman seeks redemption at a Singapore rubber plantation. Melodrama.
This short documentary features poet N Rengarajan, a migrant worker from Pudukkottai, India who sustains a practice of poetry as a way of life while working in the construction sector in Singapore. The film, structured around three of his poems, seeks to visually mirror the rhythm and tone of his writing. Together, verse and visuals strive to draw attention to the poet's acute illuminations of the realities of migrant life.
Mia, an ex-prostitute, is trapped in a loveless marriage with the abusive Quan (Sunny Pang, who also stars in Headshot in this year’s Festival lineup), a butcher who runs a roast meat shop. When she meets sensitive funeral director Wu, their passion for one another escalates into an affair. But the path to true love is fraught with jealousy, forcing someone to make a deadly move.
Times are tough at Premiere Properties. Shelley "the machine" Levene and Dave Moss are veteran salesmen, but only Ricky Roma is on a hot streak. The new Glengarry sales leads could turn everything around, but the front office is holding them back until these "losers" prove themselves. Then someone decides to take matters into his own hands, stealing the Glengarry leads and leaving everyone wondering who did it.
After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.
The film offers exclusive and intimate insights into how and why the classically trained artist risked rejection to revolutionize the traditional Chinese ink art form in Singapore.
In this sun soaked adventure for the entire family, a group of five orphaned children form their own makeshift family while attempting to operate outside the rules of society. Though they must sometimes steal to survive, their loyalty to one another means that they will always have a brother or sister to count on.
Two Singaporean girls join together to form the Papaya Sisters, a getai group that sings at performances during the seventh lunar month. Big Papaya is estranged from her mother, who disapproves of her performances, whilst Little Papaya is an orphan who suffers from terminal cancer. The two are assisted by Auntie Ling and her son, Guan Yin. The two soon rise to the top of the Singaporean getai scene singing traditional Hokkien songs, but their fame brings along with it the enmity of the Durian Sisters, a rival group of techno-singing Eurasian girls.
In 1992, teenager Sandi Tan shot Singapore's first indie road movie with her enigmatic American mentor Georges – who then vanished with all the footage. Twenty years later, the 16mm film is recovered, sending Tan, now a novelist in Los Angeles, on a personal odyssey in search of Georges' vanishing footprints.
Masato is a young ramen chef in Japan. When he finds his late mother's journal after the sudden death of his emotionally distant father, he takes it with him to her native country, Singapore, hoping to piece together the story of his family and his life.
Everything seemed well for the much-respected officer who was getting married and was just promoted to the rank of lieutenant, before an accident at the training ground cost his life.