Twelve year old Zaffan lives in a small rural community in Malaysia. In full puberty, she realizes that her body is changing at an alarming rate. Her friends turn away from her when a mass hysteria hits the school. Fear spreads and a doctor intervenes to chase away the demon that haunts the girls. Like a tiger harassed and dislodged from its habitat, Zaffan decides to reveal its true nature, its fury, its rage and its beauty.
After the mysterious disappearance of their baby daughter, a young couple receives strange videos and realizes someone has been filming their daily life — even in their most intimate moments. The police set up surveillance around their home to catch the voyeur but the family starts to crumble as secrets unravel under the scrutiny of eyes watching them from all sides.
Life is not the most fulfilling for sixteen-year-old Meng: Lounging at home with his grieving father on a daily basis, being excluded from his family’s past, and forced into bullying other kids at school. Everything changes when he is thrown into a life-altering adventure that propels him into an exciting unfamiliar landscape.
When ambitious young correctional officer Aiman is transferred to the country's highest-security prison, he catches the attention of the seasoned chief executioner Rahim. Aiman's desire to become the hangman's apprentice is not only professional but born of an unspeakable urge to reconnect with a past that haunts him.
A woman and a little girl find solace and joy during secret stairwell meetings, bonding over playful games.
A cop in Singapore investigates the disappearance of a Chinese migrant construction worker who spent sleepless nights playing a mysterious video game.
In her last year of secondary school, a bright Indonesian student is determined to pursue her education and resist getting married, despite the expectations of her community.
It is an unwelcome homecoming for Siva, a Singaporean-Indian ex-convict, haunted by a tragedy in his past. Released after eight years behind bars and dejected by his mother’s coldness, he leaves home in search of his ex-wife and daughter. His old friend denies any knowledge of their whereabouts and instead leads him back into crime. Finding him sheltering in ‘void decks’ (the open public access corridors found beneath government-built residential housing in Singapore), the police force him to meet with a social worker; a woman also dealing with her own fears.
The boundary between viewer and art dissolves in Ho Tzu Nyen’s sublime work, The Cloud of Unknowing. Step inside and find a comfortable space in the room. On a screen, a narrative unfolds, set in a public housing complex in Singapore, where eight characters in eight apartments individually encounter a cloud, embodied both as a figure and a vaporous mist. The film is rear-projected and looped, integrating a complex soundtrack and synchronized steam machines to create a seamless and sublimely atmospheric sense of film/audience permeability. (Sundance Film Festival)
A television switches on. A mind snaps. A man discovers his murdered wife. As he stares at her lifeless body, the events leading to her death play before him, like in a movie. HERE follows the journey of He Zhiyuan, a middle-aged man who struggles to make sense of his reality. Reeling from the sudden death of his wife, he loses the will to speak and is interned at Island Hospital. There, he meets strident kleptomaniac Beatrice with whom he forms an inexplicable bond. As He adjusts to life within, he is selected for an experimental treatment, which forces him to confront the devastating truth behind his past, present, and future. Meanwhile, a filmmaker visits Island Hospital to document the lives of the staff and patients.
1990s Saigon, San wants to have enough money for a sex-change operation that will fulfil her dream of living in a woman’s body. San’s lover, Nam, must work as an underground dog-cage fighter to support this dream. The young lovers are unaware that the dark forces they will have to battle may cost them their relationship and test the limit of their humanity.
Rosie Wong, a blind woman, shares a retrospective account about the three lives which shaped her life. Taking inspiration from ‘The Giving Tree’, her life is significantly changed by a kind stranger, Pak Cik Tubi Moh Salleh, who helped her get to work everyday for 5 years. Pak Cik Tubi continued this good deed for the next few years, tirelessly helping Madam Rosie.
In 1965, an Indian family, whose men have been loyal servants of the British Royal Air Force, are faced with a life-changing offer of British citizenship as a reward for their years of service. The anglophone father is determined to follow his colonial masters back to England, while his newly-wed son yearns to build a new life in Singapore with his pregnant wife. Their conflict studies the notion of state and identity in a time of post-independence uncertainty.
On the last day for the residents to vacate a high-rise apartment before its demolishment, a young girl, Iris, and her mother are moving out. On a tight deadline, her boyfriend and his friend are also present to help. Iris inevitably gets distracted exploring the vacant spaces of her neighbours, relishing the moment. As they pull away in the rental truck for the last time, Iris sits in the back with her boyfriend, surrounded by her furniture. She allows a small ray of light to penetrate the darkness of the truck. The images of the outside world appear on the interior of the truck; they watch the inverted building before it eventually disappears forever.
A trilogy set in three iconic locations within Singapore's Little India district: Race Course Road, Campbell Lane and Syed Alwi Road. The notion of re-examining history by truth and myth through visual storytelling serves as the inter-connecting thread between the three short films, and the films offer glimpses of Little India through the 19th and 20th centuries.
Shot with Malaysian skinheads in Penang, it’s a meditative fantasy on signs, signals and butterflies, leading to pointed reflections on the relationship between British colonial history and popular culture in South-East Asia
Intersecting stories of a film school graduate, a cinema-projectionist and a home delivery boy who look for individual hope to adopt with the complex power structure in contemporary Dhaka city.
This is a love story adapted from JM Sali’s tale of an Indian man who meets and falls in love with a Chinese woman in Singapore by chance, but she discovers that he is actually married back home in India. Told from the perspective of the writer—who is played by more than one actor, and who also plays the character—the film blurs the lines between roles, reality, time and space. The words and text of the writer also interplay with the sound of silence and the actions of the actors and characters.
Timeless is a visceral experience which disrobes the human condition over three epochs drawing upon searing images inspired by Francis Bacon’s triptych series. It is an examination of the questions “Time changes but do people change?” If people do change, why does HIStory repeat itself?
Featuring five short stories of the reflections, interpretations and perspectives as our Singaporean filmmakers go on a journey in search of their cultural roots and how they make Singapore home, the omnibus seamlessly weaves the past and present as generations seek to understand, appreciate, preserve and pass on our heritage.
