Singapore director This is this did not spend much time at home since its debut function Amoeba The premiere in the Discovery section of the International Film Festival in Toronto.
Since then, the film has been shown at the Film Festival in Busan in the section “And in Asian cinema”, and then moved to Pignao, where he received three awards, including the best female role for the performance by Ranis Tay, as well as the Youth Jury Award and Critics of Critics.
“It was interesting to see how the audience reacts to the film in different countries,” says Tan, who grew up in Singapore and moved to Los -Andheles after studying the film at the University of Wesleyan. “In Toronto, we had many people of Asian origin, who said that this helped them explain the Canadians to their brothers, how everything returned home.
“In Korea, they understood the cultural context, but I was curious about a combination of languages,” Tan continues. “For us, Singaporetsev, it is natural to combine several languages in one sentence, but the show of Busana made me think about showing a film in a homogeneous culture – how would it collide?”
The film received at the authoritarian school for girls in Singapore, the film follows a minor teenager (TAY), who attracts the attention of three other girls who also annoy the ultra -strigan school rules – the hair and length of the skirt, measured with the help of a ruler, and without colored belts for bra. Girls become quick friends, hanging out after school in the cave, which they discovered on the construction site; Meanwhile, the two girls stumbled upon each other's unexpressed desire when they are trying to remove the evidence of the ghost.
When the family driver Uncle Fun, the playing Taiwanese veteran Jack Kao, tells them stories about the bands of the triad, which once wandered along the streets of Colonial Singapore, the girls decide to form their own gang. But they soon remind them that in modern Singapore such activities are illegal and can expel them from school.
The dialogue is in combination of English and Chinese, which, as Tan noted, is completely normal in Singapore – a multi -cultural society with four official languages, including Tamil and Malay.
Tan, who previously shot a short film Strawberry cheesecake Also at a school for girls, she wants to unpack some of the Chinese Singapore in the film, at least, ask how an extremely successful city state, the richest in Southeast Asia, turned out to be so conformist. The Girls School are called a secondary school of the girls of Confucius, which, as Tan explains, is a little joke.
“When I grew up in Singapore, Confucianism meant the respect of elders and family, which sounds good. But there is a much darker side of Confucianism, which is actually very patriarchal, ”says Tan. “According to Confucian values, a woman should have three in her life – her father, her husband and her son. And the girls should not go to school, so calling it to the girlfriend of girls – a little irony. ”
She continues: “But I actually think that Confucian values are subconsciously in the fact that modern Singapore society fixes. Because people who control society, mainly the Chinese, were settlers and not indigenous for Singapore, and this concept of society is more important than a person is part of Confucism. ”
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But she adds that it is the capitalist nature of Singapore that makes it so authoritarian. One of the most highly efficient countries of the world, with the highest GDP per capita in Asia, Singapore began to get rich in the 1970s in accordance with state policy, which mixed business entrepreneurship with democratic freedom restrictions.
“At least my growth experience at school was that you need to obey, you need to get good grades and go to a good school, otherwise you will not get a good job,” Tan says. “The idea is that you become a productive employee in society and continue to nourish the capitalist machine. Therefore, it is this combination of capitalism and Confucianism that makes the country so conservative. ”
Anyone who does not fit into this car – triads, activists, trade unions – tend to just disappear, explains Tan. Even singing songs associated with gangs is illegal in Singapore, and the authorities have been very upset in the triades since the 1980s.
In the same way, anyone who does not become a productive citizen, having married and having children, will also fight. Ironically, given its high standard of living, Singapore is not so tolerate to LGBTK+ lifestyle, like some other countries of Southeast Asia. When the government finally legitimized the same -sex activity in 2023, it adopted a constitutional amendment to simultaneously block any debate about same -sex marriages.
IN AmoebaAttracting between two girls is proposed, but not intentionally completed. “I think the film is strange, but it is not in your face. I was more interested in studying this kind of fluidity and formation, because they are not yet fully formed, ”Tang says. “But I think that in Singapore, most people who decided that this is what they want in their lives still found that their partner would not be invited to family meetings.”
Previous short films tan Hi, ahA (2019) and Strawberry cheesecake (2021) also explore the Singapore culture and identity and show at festivals, including Toronto, Locarno and Berlin. She is also paired with the Philippines of Don Joseph Rafael Elahan on a short film, Cold incisionFor the factory of directors of 2024, which was checked in Cannes.
She met her Amoeba Producer Fran Borgia from Singapore She was only for the filmIn the cinematography of Southeast Asia at the Singapore International Film Festival in 2019. It is known that he worked with leading Singapore talents such as Siew Hua Yeo (Ostrics of the eyes) and Bu Junfeng (Student), Borgia produced a short film Tan Strawberry cheesecake And created its debut function as international joint production.
The producers in the film include Denis Vaslin from the Netherlands “Volya”, Antoine Simkin from French films Les d'Hontoine, Luis Romer from Spain Mararía Films and Han Sunhee from the Widelog's The Widelog office. The film received a new Singapore grant from the Singapore Cinema Commission, as well as financing the Hubert Balta Foundation, the film of the Netherlands Foundation, France Cinémas du Monde and the SFFILM Rainin grant from the American Diversion Bangkok processes international sales.
Amoeba won three Pyiff awards, including the best actress for Ranice Tay
Tan says that she found four young actresses, Nicole Lee, Lim Shi-An and Genevieve Tan-S. The help of an expanded casting. “None of them made a feature film before – two were in short films, and two in the theater. We met many potential actors, and four of them really stand out, ”says Tan. “We rehearsed a lot of their scenes and had excellent working relations.”
This chemistry between the actresses and the director can be clearly visible in the film, which has already led to the best actress victory for Tay, which was in Pignao to personally accept the award.
And it seems that the actors and team of the film will be in the future for some time. The upcoming festival shows include AFI Fest, Hamburg, Bangkok and Taiwan's Golden Horse Festival and Awards, where the film has just been nominated for the best new director. Several still not yet implemented festival slots are expected later this year.
