Ghostlight(2024) is an unassuming yet extraordinary film that delicately weaves together themes of love, family, grief, and loss. Co-directed by Alex Thompson and Kelly O’Sullivan, the film captivated audiences at this year’s Sundance Film Festival with its quiet brilliance and emerged as a standout gem among the festival’s many talented offerings.

The story follows Dan Mueller (Keith Kupfurer), a tense and sullen construction worker trying to hold his family—and himself—together after a traumatic incident. As he struggles to manage his belligerent teenage daughter, Daisy (the promisingly talented Katherine Mallen Kupferer), and her erratic behaviour at school, we also see him trying to maintain an emotional distance from his wife, Sharon (wonderfully played by Tara Mallen), an elementary school music teacher who is trying her best to reconnect the family.

After a sudden outburst of explosive frustration at work, Dan finds himself jobless and increasingly unable to control his emotions. Witnessing the incident, Rita (breakout Filipino star Dolly De Leon), an actress from a nearby theatre, offers him an unexpected opportunity to join their community production of Shakespeare’s classic Romeo and Juliet. “It seemed like you might want a chance of being somebody else”, Rita suggests.

Ghostlight is ultimately a story about how people live in the face of loss and tragedy. At its core lies a profound question: In times of immense grief, how do we rediscover the capacity to let our emotions flow freely, if embracing them means admitting defeat?

Ghostlight offers theatre as an unexpected doorway––a place where pretending might help us reconnect with what’s real. The film delicately underscores the transformative power that art and community have in helping people navigate through life’s toughest struggles, reminding us that any attempt to engage with our emotions at all is better than burying them and pretending they don’t exist. “Many of us live our lives repressing our emotions because out there, they can be a liability. But in here, we can put those intogood use”—eloquently delivered by the incredibly gentle Rita.

Despite its heavy themes, the movie is surprisingly funny and deeply cathartic, blending tears and laughter in just the right way. You cannot help but laugh at the many situational comedic moments, like watching Dan, a big, gruff construction worker, try to perform breathing exercises and do silly dances with the other actors. But watching him slowly break apart, piece by piece, and learn to feel, is incredibly moving.

In the Mueller family, it is clear that everyone is processing the incident in their own way; Daisy constantly lashes out because she doesn’t know how to let go of her emotions, Sharon turns to gardening as a means to cope, and Dan just stubbornly tries to will his way through. The family, or maybe just Dan, refuses to talk about the elephant in the room. Yet, the thing about buried emotions is that they don’t disappear––they fester and grow until they demand to be faced. Grief, in particular, is not just a storm that passes; it’s a quiet drizzle that lingers, shaping the entire landscape of people’s lives.

Dan’s inability to express his emotions not only isolates him but also causes immense strain on his family, who are silently struggling alongside him. One particular moment that moved me is when Daisy, after her therapy session, shares with Dan in the car that her friend attends family therapy together because, as she puts it, “she’s not the only problem.” It’s a poignant reminder that the burdens of grief and healing aren’t meant to rest on just one person’s shoulders.

It is only through the act of stepping into another’s shoes, of playing a character with motives he couldn’t even begin to understand, that Dan begins to find the courage to confront and accept the truth. By finally letting himself feel, Dan opens the door for his family to confront their pain together, breaking free from the silent isolation he had unintentionally imposed on them. In learning to share the weight of grief, they find a path toward healing as a family.

What makes the portrayal of the Muellers so compelling and heartfelt was the natural, lived-in dynamic among the trio. Finding out later that Keith Kupferer, Tara Mallen, and Katherine Mallen Kupferer are an actual real-life family adds yet another layer of charm to the film. The performances across the board feel deeply truthful, and this authenticity grounds the story in a way that makes the audience truly believe in the Muellers as a family.

Katherine Mallen Kupferer, in particular, delivers a powerhouse performance as Daisy, whose fiery intensity perfectly contrasts Dan’s restrained demeanour. She steals the show with her raw, magnetic energy, commanding attention in every scene she’s in.

While the plot risks being too contrived and predictable, borrowing its foundation from the all-too-familiar story of Romeo and Juliet, Ghostlight manages to carve out a tale of its own, leaving a heartfelt and truly genuine story about love, loss, family, and community, all set against the backdrop of theatre and with just the right amount of lightness.

Melancholic and tear-jerking at its core, the film is also filled with an uplifting sense of hope, warmth, and healing. Ghostlight reminds us that only by allowing ourselves to feel can we truly continue to live.

The act of watching Resurrection feels like drifting through a century of cinema while half-awake. From the very first frame, Director Bi Gan makes it clear that narrative clarity is not the point. Instead, the film invites the viewer into a space where images, textures, and movement take precedence over conventional storytelling.

The film imagines a world where humanity has traded away the ability to dream in exchange for longevity, leaving a rare few “Deliriants” to carry the burden of imagination. But Resurrection has little interest in explaining this mythology in concrete terms. Instead, the premise acts as a framework, giving Bi Gan the freedom to move across eras, genres, and visual styles. The film becomes a meditation on cinema itself; how it remembers, reinvents, and resurrects fragments of the past.

Form is where Resurrection truly comes alive. Bi Gan transitions confidently between contrasting cinematic textures, from silent-era aesthetics to noir-inflected shadows, from expressionistic fantasy to warm romanticism. Each segment feels governed by a different cinematic grammar, yet the progression between them is fluid. These shifts frame cinema as a living thing, constantly changing, borrowing, and reshaping what came before. The result is a film that feels both deeply nostalgic yet strangely forward-looking, aware of its past but unwilling to be confined by it.

This devotion to form reaches its apex in the now much-discussed long take towards the film’s denouement, forming a sequence that feels like a culmination of Resurrection’s ideas about immersion and movement. The camera glides effortlessly between perspectives, collapsing boundaries between observer and participant, third-person and first-person, performance and presence. It is playful, daring, and quietly euphoric. The sequence’s shift from the characters breaking into a karaoke performance to violence, shows its absurdity and joy in equal measure and only reinforces the film’s belief that spectacle and sincerity need not be opposites.

That said, Resurrection can be a demanding watch. Its opacity is deliberate, and this can be alienating to mainstream audiences. Scenes often do not contain a satisfying resolution, and emotional through-lines dissolve just as they begin to cohere. For some viewers, this dream logic will feel liberating, yet for many, it may be exhausting. The film moves slowly, luxuriating in atmosphere and texture, demanding patience and active engagement. It’s easy to see why some critics have taken issue with its refusal to offer clear narrative payoff.

Yet this resistance to easy comprehension feels central to Bi Gan’s project. Resurrection is not interested in guiding the viewer; it asks them to drift, to feel, to surrender. In an era where films are increasingly shaped around so-called “TikTok attention spans,” its commitment to ambiguity feels almost radical. Personally, I would rather watch a film that risks confusion than one that settles for familiarity.

Resurrection will not be for everyone, but for those willing to meet it on its own terms, it offers something rare: a reminder that cinema can still surprise, still disorient, still feel entirely new. Whatever else it may be, I can confidently claim that I have never seen a film like it in my life.

Author’s bio:

Chinmaya’s personality runs on cinema, from bingeing films to dissecting every frame. Posting reviews on Letterboxd and Instagram as TheFilmBoi, he’s happiest talking movies all day long. Engineer by trade, filmmaker by passion, he believes life’s better with a little Nolan mind-bend, and a story that keeps you guessing.

Marty Mauser, played by Timothee Chalamet in what critics and audiences are calling his career-defining performance, is the almost-eponymous protagonist of the film. If the story of the film spends its almost two and a half hours of runtime interrogating what it means for Marty to be “Supreme,” Marty Supreme itself arrives bearing a quieter, parallel question. It marks Josh Safdie’s first solo directorial foray into feature filmmaking, following the unceremonious split from long-time collaborator and brother Ben Safdie; a parting that tasks the film, too, with proving what this new identity means.

Marty Supreme follows a signature Safdie formula perfected in 2019’s Uncut Gems, the last feature directed together by the pair. Josh Safdie once again collaborates with writer-editor Ronald Bronstein and composer Daniel Lopatin, whose jittery, synthesised score works in tandem with the film’s frantic cutting and restless camera movements. Both films follow the story of obsessed individuals who stop at nothing to achieve a goal through willpower, cajoling, and deception — fertile ground for creating characters that are exhilarating to watch.

However, unlike Adam Sandler’s Howard Ratner, Marty Mauser is driven by ambition and not addiction, a key difference that ultimately makes it much harder for audiences to sympathise with Marty: ambition is a choice, while addiction often isn’t. Where Uncut Gems uses its formal brilliance to mirror compulsion and self-destruction, Marty Supreme deploys the same techniques to overload our senses, placing the audience inside Marty’s headspace: always rushing, always scheming, never still. He dreams of being a Ping-Pong superstar, or as he puts it, the “face of the entire sport in the U.S.”. What’s clear here is that he doesn’t simply wish to be the best at the sport (it is debatable whether or not he even cares about Ping-Pong at all), he unequivocally wishes to receive supreme recognition of that fact. Undoubtedly, writing a character as narcissistic and self-indulgent as Marty is a challenge in itself, and energising that narcissism through formal bravura is even more exciting to watch unfold on screen.

Marty’s tall ambitions cast him as the underdog, as he is flung around his native New York, searching for cash to fly to overseas table tennis tournaments. This yields a series of entertaining hijinks that foregrounds Marty’s fast-talking, wise-cracking personality, including Ping-Pong scams with childhood friend Wally (Tyler, The Creator), a robbery at gunpoint conducted like a business transaction, and soliciting employment from a man whose arm was recently crushed by an errant bathtub. There are few moments where Safide brings us into the mind of Marty, instead focusing on creating a freight train of frantic montage.

The host of characters in Marty’s life all stand in opposition to his goal. Some are obvious, like his uncle Murray (Larry Sloman) who pleads with him to grow up and start taking care of his aging mother Rebecca (Fran Drescher), or Koto Endo, played by a real-life Japanese table tennis talent, who “steals” the title of champion from him at Wembley Stadium. Some appear as friends or supporters, but ultimately slow Marty down in his pursuit. Most notable is Rachel Mizler (Odessa A’zion), a young married woman who is Marty’s girlfriend – when it’s convenient for him – and the mother of his child.

And when Marty’s harebrained schemes fail to bear fruit, he is forced to bow to Milton Rockwell (Kevin O’Leary), a stunt casting effort that could initially seem tacky, instead offering real narrative insight. Their dynamic is thematically rich, acting as a pointedly ironic critique of how the old guard hoards wealth, status, and power, gatekeeping the American Dream from young hopefuls. Granted, O’Leary is only so good in his role because he practically plays himself, his acting chops moulded through his experience portraying the unpleasantly entertaining “Mr. Wonderful” on Shark Tank. In a key scene, Marty suffers a verbal (and physical) beating from Milton, debasing himself to earn his ticket to Japan.

Evidently, Safdie intends for Marty to be an unsympathetic character for a majority of the runtime, as he dodges real-world responsibility in favour of a headless fantasy. Marty falls nicely into an informal but increasingly familiar lineage of “Sigma Male” movie characters that have gained admiration in Internet spaces: typically white men who are mythologised and pedestalised by audiences despite being narratively framed as failures rather than ideals. Examples include Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver) and Walter White (Breaking Bad). All of these characters are idolised for similar reasons, as they tend to reject societal conventions to indulge in their own fantasies.

SPOILER WARNING: THE LAST FEW PARAGRAPHS OF THIS ARTICLE WILL MOST DEFINITELY SPOIL THE ENDING. READ AHEAD AT YOUR OWN RISK OR COME BACK TO THIS POINT AFTER WATCHING IT FOR YOURSELF.

What’s different for Marty, though, is that his fantasy of supremacy is never truly endangered or altered in his mind. To him, he’s still Marty Supreme, which makes for almost flat character development. He casts aside his relationship with his mother and the film writes it off in a few scenes. His fleeting affair with washed-up actress Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow) feels like it could teach him a lesson or two about the hollowness of success, but it ends as suddenly as it began. Only at the very last minute, as his dream is veritably crushed (ironically through besting Koto Endo), do we see him come to grips with reality, rushing back to witness the birth of his child.

It is this ending that leaves the most to be desired, as if those last few minutes of redemption and humility asks us to wipe from our memory Marty’s boorish, entitled, and childish behaviour that we witnessed for the past two hours. The audience is led to believe that relinquishing his Ping-Pong ambitions is Marty’s lesson learnt, but the film has not done the work to convince us that this relinquishment signifies anything deeper than a temporary pause. It dodges the harder task of writing real and humbling growth for Marty.

As a film obsessed with kineticism, it balks at the stillness required for genuine reckoning. Safdie’s camera and story are always in a hurry, perhaps at the expense of a more nuanced, tragic, or hopeful conclusion. Marty’s final turn toward groundedness feels less like an earned insight, more a narrative convenience, a way to dismount without fully interrogating the cost of the joyride.

This is not to deny the film its considerable pleasures. As a feat of craft, Marty Supreme is exhilarating. Perhaps that is the point. Or perhaps it is the film’s greatest missed opportunity. In the end, Marty Supreme is a thrilling, impeccably engineered experience that refuses to risk emotional consequence. It takes us on a breathless ride, lets us feel the speed and swagger of its protagonist, and then gently sets us back down before the crash. A riskless joyride, expertly driven, but not quite interested in asking what happens when Marty has nowhere left to go.

When Francis Ford Coppola’s long-awaited science fiction epic hit the screens at Cannes in May 2024, it was greeted with a response so polarising it could only be described as classically Coppola.

Famously conceived and produced over the better part of a troubled three decades,Coppola’s 138-minute passion project has more in common with Metropolis (1927) and The Invisible Man (1933) than it does with more contemporary sci-fi outings. Filled to the brim with dazzling images that almost overwhelm the screen, Megalopolis is a vigorously neo-expressionistic experiment that reiterates Coppola’s undying commitment to cinema as an artform we’ve yet to fully discover.

While other directors tend to experiment with technique to distinguish themselves, to carve out a personal brand or motif, it would seem that every discovery Coppola makes only propels him deeper into uncharted territory. Some expected Megalopolis to be the culmination of a legendary lifetime of craftsmanship, instead we find him fresh and unpolished as ever, back in the workshop and breaking new ground yet again.

With wild stylistic swings, bombastic images and a shimmering sonic palette, Megalopolis is a full-body theatre experience that never quite manages to fully immerse its audience, but is simultaneously impossible to look away from. The result is a film akin to a half-waking dream, fading in and out of consciousness.

Basking in wild abandon, the film takes us on a journey of deconstruction, pulling apart any semblance of cinematic convention and asking us to reimagine the Cinema and the world it exists in.

Megalopolisrevolves around the oligarchy of New Rome, a society facing rapid decline. From among their ranksemergesCesar Catalina (Adam Driver), a brilliant architect and inventor whose designs seem to defy the very laws of nature. Cesar dreams of uplifting the society that struggles below him, which brings him into conflict with his self-serving, murderous relatives and the rulers of this dystopian civilisation. Over the course of 2 hours we see Cesar go through great personal sacrifice to realise his dream of building the titular Megalopolis, a self-generating city of the future.

Despite the film’s confounding stylistic approach, its underlying narrative is rather easy to follow. The abstract, sometimes phantasmagorical images are accompanied by Lawrence Fishburne’s booming narration, swooping in to provide interpretation whenever needed.Whether or not these explanations are warranted is debatable, it certainly stifles some of the film’s more potentially ambiguous moments, squashing any subjectivity by aligning us under a singular interpretation.

This lack of ambiguity extends to the film’s characters, who are essentially embodiments of archetypal figures. Overtly self-descriptive, and named after their ancient Roman counterparts, they never deviate from what they are clearly stated to be, behaving strictly according to type from beginning to end. They pose almost likestatues, and speak in a dialect so oddit has been negatively compared to The Room (2003), and more favourably to the artful campiness of David Lynch’s work inTwin Peaks.

Coppola has a restlessness that has propelled him ahead of other filmmakers in the past. Known for exploring new ideas, one wonders whether his habitual dissatisfaction with the conventional limits of Cinema will ever be fully satisfied. Megalopolis is a bold attempt to encourage the constant reinvention of Cinema, to never settle for the tools that are currently in existence but to dream above and beyond them. 

Megalopolis is a tough pill to swallow, difficult for even the most experienced and open-minded cinemagoers to wholly enjoy. But what it stands for is a noble declaration of faith in the cinematic artform, and its ability to overcome great odds to redefine itself and remain relevant to new generations of moviegoers. Whether it actually achieves that relevance itself is something one can only decide if they see the film for themselves.

Writer’s Bio:

Mark’s earliest memories revolve around the television set where, unbeknownst to him, he was beginning a lifelong obsession with Cinema. Hooked on the thrill of watching time and space warped before his eyes, he is committed to showing up at the movies, in whatever form it may be.

“On this walk down memory lane, we can allow ourselves the luxury to pull out the weeds from the side.”

In an industry that moves so rapidly in search for new and up-and-coming stars, there has been greater attention directed towards novelty, with many films centered around the experiences of youths, while stories about the older generation take a backseat. This is especially so for women, whose roles become increasingly limited with age. In 2022, a study showed that female characters over 40 in film have dropped from 20% to 14%. The 2023 Oscars had also sparked conversations surrounding female experiences through the male gaze, which seemed to have received better critical acclaim than those made by women (with the exception of Barbie, of course) [1]. Beyond just representation on screen [2], there have also been discussions around the age discrepancies between female actresses and their male counterparts, especially with young female actresses having to act older than they are [3]. Even the great Meryl Streep has expressed worries that her career “was over” when she turned 40, being only offered “three witch [roles]” instead of “female adventurers, love interests or heroes or demons” [4].

However, in 2024, more older women are taking on roles in popular cinema, like Anne Hathaway in The Idea of You, Kathryn Hahn in Agatha All Along and Rebecca Ferguson in the Dune franchise, suggesting a shift in mindset in Hollywood.

But just across the sea from the heavily romanticised narratives of commercial filmmaking, there is a humble, slice-of-life film based on the experiences of Latin American womanhood, Memories of a Burning Body.

In the gradual resurgence of films featuring stories about older women, Memories of a Burning Body is a timely bittersweet docufilm centered on the complexity of womanhood across generations and decades. It strips the narrative of heavily sensationalised, fantastical realities of female experiences in Hollywood films down to its bones, reminding us that the simple, everyday experiences of women are stories in themselves, and how the harsh realities of patriarchal society and gender expectations in reality often contest the utopian illusions of female experiences in mainstream Hollywood films.

In addition, as Latin American stories remain underrepresented in mainstream media [5], Memories of a Burning Body is a rare gem that sheds light on new perspectives of the female condition, reminding us of the need for not just female voices of the older generation, but diversity in storytelling as well.

Directed by Antonella Sudasassi Furniss, Memories of a Burning Body depicts a greying 71-year-old Woman (played by Sol Carballo), who embodies the experiences of the film’s three narrators: Ana, Patricia and Mayela, all of whom are over 60. Described as “the conversation I never had with my grandmothers”, the film tackles the difficult discussions about love, sex, marriage and ageing that are often seen as taboo. Speaking in complete anonymity, their candid narrations and reflections add a charming, witty humour amidst the film’s sentimental and mellow tone.

The film takes place in the home of the Woman. Adorned with a plethora of photos along its walls and decorated with old paraphernalia at every corner, the home exudes a sense of nostalgia, acting as a time capsule that preserves the experiences of the Woman who lives within it. Seen through the female gaze, we observe the Woman moving through her home in different stages of her life, as a child all the way to how we see her in the present. We also see the movement of its inhabitants, watching how the rooms once crowded with family, are emptied to just the Woman at present, and filled once again with her own family, and then back to her present state.

This constant movement amidst a space frozen in time adds greater poignancy to its story, showing the growth of a once sheltered girl grappling with the growing weight of gender and societal expectations, while simultaneously learning to be comfortable in her role as a daughter, mother and wife. Situated in a Latin American context, the film allows us to sympathise with the Woman’s journey in reclaiming her identity and breaking free from ideologies that were so heavily influenced by culture that betrayed her. The Woman’s life is occasionally interrupted by the gentle ringing of her phone, reminding viewers that despite the home’s traditional aesthetic, the story ultimately takes place in contemporary society, and portrays the Woman (and by extension Womanhood), as someone who is able to change and adapt.

Lighting and blocking plays a big part in bringing this story to life, often used to depict the loss of innocence in the Woman or the changing relationship she has with herself and others within the space. The intimate, warm glow of the home invites viewers to form different relationships with this environment that the Woman regards as home, viewing it as a vessel that holds countless memories, traumas and hardship. One can even regard the relationship with the home as cyclical, with the troubles of girlhood manifesting itself in different ways as the Woman matures. Despite the room’s alluring nature, Furniss makes a conscientious effort to never over-romanticise the image of the home, revealing the hardship and the harsh reality that lies beneath it.

Ultimately, this film is a celebration of the resiliency of womanhood that persists through age. It rejoices in female emancipation, and the ability of women to overcome female subjugation amidst inherited traumas and misogyny. It captures the delicate, tender nature of girlhood and all its experiences, even the curiosity of coming-of-age and the banes that come with it. As we watch the film, we are forced to question our own assumptions about the role of women, and how a system built from religious and patriarchal doctrines could so strongly skew our beliefs about female autonomy and the responsibilities of a woman in society. The film thus embodies how the female experience is one that is full of complexity, yet still so precious in our memory. The harmony created between the film’s narrative and Carballo's acting demonstrate a collective experience of womahood, and a quiet solidarity forged through these experiences.

As a female who is rightfully still coming-of-age and wishes that there were more conversations around the female experience, I saw this film as a triumphant and empowering reclamation of the female narrative. It showed how a woman’s value transcends physical appearance, age and quite literally, body. More importantly, noticing the film’s identifiable parallels on my personal experiences in Asian society, the film’s storytelling creates a universal truth presented through a Latin American context, allowing it to stand out as one that is highly personal and unique, while still resonating with a mass audience, regardless of cultural background.

Through Memories of a Burning Body, you realise that womanhood can be presented by a multitude of experiences and in more ways than one. Sensationalised, romanticised Hollywood films act as a mirror to what women can aspire to be, but womanhood can also be portrayed through vulnerability. It is learning to embrace your past with kinder eyes and taking pride in overcoming hardship. It is knowing that you are more than what society defines you to be, and learning to love yourself more because of it.

References:

[1] Wilon , N., & Kaiden, E. (2024, March 15). Hollywood’s exclusion of women over 40 leaves us watching the same show on repeat—Opinion. Yahoo Entertainment. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/hollywood-exclusion-women-over-40-175602909.html

[2] Jackson, A. (2024, February 21). 2023 marked ‘historic low’ for women in leading film roles, according to new study: ‘This is an industry failure’. Variety. https://variety.com/2024/film/news/inclusion-study-2023-historic-low-women-in-leading-film-roles-1235917950/

[3] H-SU, K. (2024, April 12). Hollywood: Why are women always younger than men in movies? Medium. https://medium.com/@kristinehsu2020/why-are-women-always-younger-than-men-in-movies-a105adec04c8
[4] Burtt, K. (2024, May 16). Meryl streep revealed why she thought her ‘career was over’ at the age of 40. Yahoo Entertainment. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/meryl-streep-revealed-why-she-170452902.html

[5] Sun, R. (2023, November 6). Despite real-life population growth, latinos remain silent or invisible in film. The Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/latino-representation-movies-study-1235637531/

In Eyes Forward (2024), director Audrie Chee delivers an introspective documentary that transcends the conventional narrative of para-athlete triumph. The 11-minute film centres on Joan Hung, a visually impaired national goalball player, and her journey navigating not just physical barriers, but emotional and societal ones as well. Through a mix of intimate storytelling and innovative filmmaking techniques, Chee crafts a narrative that feels both personal and universally resonant, inspiring viewers to see past their limitations to find their freedom.

At the heart of the documentary lies Joan's reflection on disability as something shaped by the environments we exist in, something that abled individuals like myself often take for granted. "People think that disability is a medical condition from birth, but I think that the environment is what makes us disabled," Joan remarks in the film. This sentiment is brought to life through a telling scene at a zebra crossing. In one instance, Joan is stranded and unable to cross because there is no auditory signal. In contrast, another crossing provides a beeping cue, allowing Joan to move forward with confidence. These moments highlight the difficulties disabled people face in navigating seemingly benign environments. Ultimately, societal structures have the power to empower or hinder them.

Chee's direction shines in her use of perspective. The documentary employs sensory storytelling, attempting to place the audience in Joan's shoes. Scenes filmed through a goalball eye mask, coupled with heightened soundscapes, give viewers a sense of Joan's sensory world. A particularly poignant moment unfolds when Joan shares her love for sunsets. "I love sunsets, but the colours are not so vivid anymore," she says. In tandem with her words, the scene's vibrant hues slowly fade, subtly mirroring her experience.

However, Eyes Forward is not merely about Joan's physical challenges. The documentary delves into her emotional struggles, including her complex relationship with her parents. Joan candidly shares how she once resented them, believing their genetics contributed to her condition. Yet, as the film progresses, she reveals a sense of acceptance and peace, a deeply human arc that adds layers to her story. This exploration of mental and emotional resilience is one of the film's strongest elements, reminding viewers that internal battles are often as significant as external ones.

A recurring question I had throughout the documentary is whether Joan's story could offer something new, given her extensive media presence on platforms like Youthtopia, President's Challenge Donation Drive, and Wearemajulah. The answer lies in Chee's approach. Instead of retreading familiar ground, Chee chooses to zoom in on the nuances of Joan's life: her quieter moments of reflection, vulnerability, and the deeply personal conflicts she faces. In doing so, Eyes Forward feels less like a highlight reel of achievements and more like an authentic exploration of identity and resilience.

Beyond Joan's athletic achievements, the documentary highlights her contributions to the community. As a facilitator at Control Your Controllables, a goalball programme aimed at building resilience in children, Joan demonstrates that her influence extends far beyond the court. Her passion for empowering young people, particularly those with disabilities, positions her as both an athlete and a mentor. This focus on community impact prevents Eyes Forward from falling into the clichéd narrative of the "heroic disabled athlete," offering instead a portrait of someone actively shaping the world around her.

Credit: Mediacorp 

The documentary's title, Eyes Forward, comes full circle in its final scene. Joan stands beneath an open sky, her face turned upwards, her eyes unseeing yet firmly forward. It leaves you thinking: if someone with visual impairment can courageously look towards the sky, overcome her limits, and chase her dreams, what’s stopping you? What does your sky look like?

Eyes Forward is not just Joan's story. It is a universal tale of overcoming limitations—not only those imposed by our bodies, but also those constructed by society and, sometimes, our own minds. The documentary emerges as a profound meditation on strength, acceptance, and the spaces we create for each other in our shared world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Isabel is an avid reader and writer who hopes to inspire greater connection and empathy in an increasingly isolated world. When she’s not crafting stories, she can sometimes be found going pspsps at her neighborhood cats. Connect with her on LinkedIn here.

Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman is a cult classic, to say the least. As the first major big-budget superhero feature, one could argue it paved the way for many action films that have come since. More than just a hero’s origin story, Donner’s film also explores universal themes of identity, loss, love, and sacrifice, centring on Superman as a complex character who embodies both the hope and tragedy of being a hero.

The film begins on the planet Krypton, the home world of Kal-El (Superman). In light of impending annihilation, Jor-El (Kal-El’s father) makes the painful choice to save his infant son by sending him to Earth, just as Krypton explodes. As the last survivor of his planet, Kal-El represents the lifeline of his species, in the form of a baby as a vessel for growth. Immediately, this juxtaposition establishes that Kal-El will have to live with the fact that his existence came along with the destruction of everything he came from. This duality introduces the key theme of the film - the idea that hope is often paired with tragedy. The paradox at the heart of his identity is that even in the birth of a hero, there is an accompanying shadow of devastation.

Eventually, Kal-El arrives on Earth and is found by Jonathan and Martha Kent. Yearning for a child, they name him Clark and raise him as their son. Being a part of this family serves as the foundation of Clark’s identity, allowing him to experience the human condition through warmth and love rather than as a lone survivor.

The film skips another few years with Clark now in college. After he is teased by a bully, we witness a dramatic action scene as Clark kicks a baseball far into the sky, uses his superhuman speed to race against a moving train, and reaches his barn just as the same bully drives by in his car. The mischief in this scene encapsulates the thrill of youth, as Clark takes things on a whim and acts spontaneously to “show off”. Yet, he is still called an “oddball”, highlighting his difficulties to fit in, a common experience in growing up and coming of age. Jonathan sees how Clark used his powers recklessly, and gives him a friendly pep talk where he emphasises that he has a purpose in life he will one day discover — not soon before Jonathan dies from heart failure. Clark, though blessed with extraordinary powers, is unable to save him. For the first time, he experiences the painful realities of life and loss, wondering what his purpose is, “All those things I can do. All those powers. And I couldn't even save him.”

From here on, the film takes place with Clark now a young adult. In this new stage of his life, he is introduced to the workplace environment as he begins his career at the Daily Planet. Here he meets Lois Lane, a woman determined to succeed in her work while not giving him much attention, as he carelessly stumbles around the office trying to find his place.

One night, as Lois boards a malfunctioning helicopter, Clark immediately transforms from his everyday office attire to the classic blue and red outfit. Finally, Clark Kent becomes Superman. After saving Lois, he continues to travel around the city, capturing a thief, stopping a group of robbers, fetching a cat from a tree, and saving a plane from crashing. We see reactions from the public with people in disbelief. They look up to him as a beacon of hope, finding comfort in the presence of a hero with the power to save lives. Clark’s first night as Superman enables him to finally realise his purpose on Earth, as an unlikely protector who brings balance to society. This functions as a powerful expression of self-acceptance as Clark discovers a new dimension to his identity and embraces it.

A heartfelt moment unfolds as Superman sweeps Lois into the sky, offering her a breathtaking flight over the city. We hear voiceover narration from Lois as an internal monologue, in a rhythmic poem (“Can you read my mind?”) where she expresses her awe and admiration for being with Superman. This scene is styled as a physical representation of the feeling of romance, with the couple swept off their feet in a dreamlike, ethereal atmosphere with a homemade and nostalgic quality, while the music of composer John Williams perfectly accompanies the visuals with a soothing, comforting score.

After their escapade, Superman sets Lois back onto her balcony and flies off, only to return as Clark Kent. Clark rings the doorbell to her home, to which she sees him dressed in his plain office attire and black glasses, ready for their date. This scene underscores the emotional complexity behind superheroes. While Superman is capable of grand feats, he is also Clark, the ordinary man who longs for companionship and a life beyond the responsibilities of being a hero. Yet, Superman is the persona that captures Lois’ attention. While Clark tries to speak to her, she is clearly distracted and still mesmerised by her experience with Superman.

Their relationship culminates in the film’s climactic scene where Lois dies after Superman fails to save her. Rather than a triumphant ending where the hero easily defeats the villain, the film settles on a quiet note as Clark encounters his most tragic moment, reminded of Jonathan, his father whom he could not save. Earlier, it was Lois’ near-death incident with the helicopter that got him to become Superman and save the world. Yet despite the heroic acts, he could not save the woman he loved.

This film reminds viewers that hope is found only in the context of destruction. The annihilation of his home planet made him the last survivor of his species but allowed him his newfound family on Earth, the death of his father challenged him to be the man he is, and in trying to save everyone, he fails to save some. It is not only the external conflict of those around him but the internal conflict of his identity. Is he Kal-El who holds the legacy of his people, Superman who is admired by the masses, or simply Clark Kent who wants an ordinary and happy life?

Throughout the film, basic stages in the human experience such as loss, youth and love are personified from the perspective of a superhero. This film successfully echoes that struggle, where Clark tries to find a balance between his personal life and bringing peace to humanity.

The film ultimately ends on a positive note, as Superman manages to reverse time and save Lois before her accident. But more importantly, the essence of the film is the dichotomy between peace and suffering, not only how the hero saves the world but also how he struggles from the burden of being the hero.

Since this film, Superman has become a franchise, with Clark Kent undergoing countless reinterpretations and reflecting the ever-changing perspectives of how the world would see an all-powerful champion of good. Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, for example, reflects today’s collective pessimism towards power, authority, and righteousness. On the other hand, Richard Donner’s Superman reflects an age that yearned for the innocence of hope and optimism, while still containing dimensions that feel distinctly human with its subtle internal struggles.

Overall, this origin storyis not just about how Clark Kent becomes Superman, but also what it means to take on this responsibility. While being an entertaining and comedic film about the titular superhero, Superman (1978) stands out as a film that is also mature about the tragedy of being a hero.

In 1995, Ghost in the Shell (GitS) – Mamoru Oshii’s adaptation of the manga – was released. Inspired heavily by Blade Runner (1982)’s bleak cyberpunk cities, it quickly earned its place as the next progenitor of modern sci-fi tropes, driving the genre’s obsession with AI vs humanity (its relevance today goes without saying), and was used in the Wachowskis’ pitch for The Matrix (1999).

In its opening minutes, Major Motoko Kusanagi, the film’s protagonist, wakes. She is reduced to a ghostly silhouette in front of a wide window – the city in view is pallid, yet wide awake in the morning sun. Our fully cybernetic protagonist sits on her bed – body hunched, heavy, and unhurried – the pause before the day begins.

Twenty-two years later, this familiar composition returns in Rupert Sanders’s 2017 live-action remake of the same name. Except, this time, Kusanagi is Major Mira Killian (played by A-lister Scarlett Johansson). She wakes in a sterile maintenance room, her surroundings the same dreary grey as the city outside. Wires are conspicuously attached to her neck, and her posture is unnaturally poised and choreographed, as if to emphasise her unhuman-ness.

These two shots are ostensibly similar: the positioning of the window, the Major, and the bed faithfully duplicated. Yet, the bleak expressiveness of the original, its stark lighting, meditative mood, and purpose are entirely lost in the remake. This shot is only symptomatic of a larger problem; the remake makes a concerted effort to replicate the husk of the original, namely the visuals and the general plot structure, but approaches the heart and intent of the story with an entirely different understanding. While its expansive CGI visuals and action sets are technically impressive, it is nearly unanimously regarded as a pale imitation of the original, both philosophically and stylistically.

The remake is no stranger to backlash for its cultural erasure: prior to release, it was criticised for its predominantly white cast and Scarlett Johansson’s casting as the originally Japanese Major. This erasure follows a pattern we often see in Hollywood remakes of Asian films – think Oldboy (2013). However, their Westernisation runs deeper than its exchange of ethnic authenticity for Hollywood star power, and is most profound when the clamour to make a profitable blockbuster leads to a fundamental misunderstanding of the source material’s cultural context, and in turn, a less-than-effective film. It is easy to simply ascribe it to the filmmakers’ incompetence, but that would be too flimsy. The question, then, is not only what elements got lost in the remake, but also why this will always be the case if we carelessly transplant Asian stories and approaches onto Western blockbuster blueprints.

The foundational Japanese philosophy of Ghost in the Shell (1995)

The 1995 GitS and its preceding manga series, though set in 2029, reflect the anxieties of 1990s Japan. It was a global powerhouse, seduced by the promises of rapid technological progress. Yet, it was unable to defend itself, forcibly disarmed and reliant on America for security under the Yoshida Doctrine – all in order to channel its resources into technology. What emerged was a newfound anxiety with technology, where a booming country began to drown in its own progress, losing its old ideals and sense of self to mimic the West.

Within this context, the 1995 GitS was conceived, channelling these anxieties into a future where Japan once again wrestles with its identity when overtaken by technology. Kusanagi, with a fully cybernetic body (the “shell”) and only a human brain (the “ghost”), embodies this anxiety at the beginning of her arc: What is identity if all parts of her body can be replaced and upgraded?

Kusanagi encounters the Puppet Master, our main antagonist, who has been “ghost hacking” the cyberbrains of cybernetic individuals, altering their memories and, in turn, their actions. At the beginning of her counter-cyberterrorism unit’s (Section 9) investigation into this individual, Kusanagi tracks a suspected garbage truck. There is a particularly poignant scene, where it is revealed to one of the garbage collectors in an interrogation that the Puppet Master had falsified his memories for him to do its bidding. He never had a wife or daughter in the first place. Kusanagi watches this interrogation unfold from behind the glass, facing a reflection of herself – a recurring visual motif for her character. If everything can be fabricated and imitated, was there ever truly a ghost in her?

This motif returns when Kusanagi sees a woman who looks identical to her – perhaps she was always just a synthetic reflection of another mass-produced “shell”. Kusanagi dives in her free time to feel vulnerable and human: “I feel…fear. Cold. Alone.” There is a beautiful sequence where she floats weightless back to the surface, staring at her reflection in the water surface – “…I imagine I’m becoming someone else.” – before she breaks through the surface, meeting her old self again. She is helplessly confined, conditionally human, “Only free to expand myself within boundaries.”

In the remake, the cultural context that made the 1995 GitS so profound and unique is reduced, its philosophical dilemma shoddily translated into a story of institutional rebellion, and the reclamation of a true, “human” self. Here, Kusanagi is Major Mira Killian, a cybernetic human whose human mind was placed into an artificial body by Hanka Robotics after her previous body was destroyed in a terrorist attack. Still a dedicated officer like the original, she experiences “glitches”, or fragments of memories of her past life that make her doubt her reality. She acts on her own initiative to talk to the Puppet Master, or Kuze, who reveals to her that Hanka had lied to her: she had in fact been a runaway teen, abducted and experimented on, and her true memories overridden. It’s a trite twist: Kuze is now our misunderstood antagonist, and Hanka a corporate-military complex of pure evil that violates bodily autonomy just to create new technology.

Kusanagi’s arc in the original is not as simply decipherable or linear; her initial dilemma, which revolves around a Western Turing-test logic, dissolves when the Puppet Master enters the story. A virtual programme that gained sentience through an accumulation of experience, assembled its own body, and escaped government control. It has no biological origin whatsoever, and yet undeniably possesses a ghost. No longer does she feel the need to prove the existence of her ghost; she instead asks, “What if a cyber brain could possibly generate its own ghost and create a soul all by itself? And if it did, just what would be the importance of being human then?”

The remake, however, doesn’t quite know what it tries to say. Its didactic mantra, “We cling to memories as if they define us. But what we do defines us,” is roughly approximate to the 1995 original (though tackily fed to us in her self-aggrandising hero’s monologue). Yet, Killian spends the majority of the runtime doing precisely the opposite – preoccupied with finding her lost memories, her mother, and herself in the process. She settles into a conventional, comprehensible self-recovery arc, tethering her ghost and meaning to her past. And even then, she is stripped of the conviction Kusanagi so steadfastly possesses, her existential doubt only a result of her victimhood at the hands of Hanka.

It is this turn in Kusanagi’s arc that I believe the remake fundamentally misunderstands. While Kusanagi lacks a “human” origin that Killian possesses, and both ask the same “Who am I?” question, the original story legitimises Kusanagi’s arc without ever needing to strictly prove that she is human enough. Many AI films like Blade Runner and A.I. Artificial Intelligence still feel the need to verify an AI’s humanity with signs of sentience, emotion, or a past, but GitS takes a radically different approach. The remake seems to stick to this AI trope, anxiously clinging to Killian’s origin as if to validate her humanity and meaning.

The reason these films’ messages diverge so starkly boils down to the philosophical and cultural differences underneath the Japanese original and Western remake. Western thinking about artificial consciousness has long been shaped by a demand for verification according to human standards – think Descartes’s "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am" – such that the ghost, or soul, must prove its existence. Similarly, Western pop culture depictions of AI, such as The Terminator and I, Robot, regard them as fundamentally inferior to human exceptionality. Japanese philosophy, however, offers a different premise. In Shinto animism, reikon (a spirit/soul) dwells in everything, from nature to objects. Unlike Western philosophy, Shintoism does not strictly separate the “natural” and the “artificial”, and souls are not contingent on the condition of being human. The 1995 GitS follows a “techno-animist” philosophy, accepting technological beings as a part of nature, and naturally in possession of a soul (see this funeral ceremony for robot dogs and AI monk). It seems as though, without this cultural grounding, the remake fears that mainstream audiences wouldn’t understand a cybernetic protagonist whose humanity is treated as ultimately irrelevant.

It is this revelation that brings Kusanagi to the completion of her arc; her rejection of any stagnant ghost and an acceptance of a new form of being. The Puppet Master proposes to Kusanagi a merging of their two selves, casting aside the bonds of a physical body and “elevat[ing their] consciousness to a higher plane.” Kusanagi still clings to the concept of her ghost, asking for a guarantee that her sense of self would remain. The Puppet Master rejects this concept entirely: there is never a stagnant sense of self because “Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you.” It echoes the Buddhist idea of anattā – the idea that no permanent self exists. Their transcendence beyond a material attachment mirrors the concept of nirvana, the ultimate liberation from suffering.

Whether GitS is solely an allegory for Buddhism, as some argue, the final turn in Kusanagi’s arc is undeniably born out of Eastern religious philosophies– the discovery of meaning and a future beyond the self. Conversely, Mira Killian’s discovery of meaning is rooted in her reclamation of the distinct self, rejecting Kuze’s offer to merge (he was driven by a romantic connection in their past…?). By excising the original’s most pivotal plot point, the remake abandons any attempt to engage with the original’s philosophy. It instead falls back on familiar Western existential thought, celebrating individuality as the ultimate source of existential meaning.

While the original was founded on fundamentally different cultural ideas, the remake makes no effort to convey its message universally. As the 1995 GitS comes to a close, the camera pans up to reveal the vast expanse of New Port City – where the film takes place – dwarfing Kusanagi. Now, neither the Major nor the Puppet Master, she asks, “And where does the newborn go from here? The net is vast and infinite.” GitS proves to be a story concerned with the limitless possibilities that surpass human understanding, while its remake fears any exploration beyond the self and the past.

Diverging cultural approaches to cinema

Despite being a cyberpunk thriller, much of 1995’s GitS is spent in stillness and silence. In the 2017 remake, however, much of this restraint is replaced with spectacle. The two films’ cinematic language is vastly different – a product of their cultural approaches to the medium – and plays a big hand in defining how the philosophical ideas at the heart of the story end up being conveyed.

Somewhere in the middle of the 1995 GitS, there exists a three-and-a-half-minute montage; 34 shots dedicated solely to showcasing the world of New Port City, inspired by the grittily gentrified, rustic landscape of 1990s Hong Kong. In Japanese cinema, these pauses that break the tension of a film are a common technique among Japanese auteurs, and are what Hayao Miyazaki calls ma (間), or “pillow shots” in Ozu’s work. Ma is the Japanese concept, rooted in Zen, of negative space – a pause in time, momentary emptiness in space, or, for Miyazaki, “The time in between my clapping”. By allowing the film’s world to breathe away from the main storyline, it conveys the existential loneliness and desperation of a city losing its heart to modernisation.

The remake decides instead to translate these sequences into kitschy montages of drone shots, boasting the remarkable CGI that brought the world to life (though its world seems to resemble Blade Runner more than it does the original). The world in the 1995 GitS is not flaunted to the audience; it simply exists as a character, framed only from the perspective of humans on the ground. These differences extend to the films’ pacing in general: where the 1995 GitS gives the audience time for reflection amidst the action, the remake, much like other Hollywood blockbusters, seems to fear losing the audience’s engagement. Scott McCloud, in his book Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993), describes the difference in comic panel transitions in America and Japan by the latter’s emphasis on 'being there' rather than 'getting there', and I couldn’t explain it better.

Where the remake crowds its frame with action set pieces and cyberpunk CGI, the 1995 GitS frames its story with restraint; the lighting, composition, space, and characters speak for themselves. While the remake recreates some scenes nearly shot-for-shot, their beauty is lost within the noise most of the time, as seen in the introduction’s shot comparison. Where the 1995 GitS was still, the remake’s camera is restless, adding a frantic energy to the action sequences that is more jarring than engaging. Its background is undiscerningly crowded, yet still manages to be bland and grey, and annoyingly darkly lit for some reason.

During the interrogation of the garbage collector of the 1995 GitS, five shots are used to convey his story. The camera pushes in slowly, the fluorescent glare casting harsh shadows on his face as he learns all his memories have been fabricated. The camera allows his expression alone to convey his devastation so tenderly. The remake takes a radically different approach: it is devoid of the quiet desperation of the original, opting instead for awkwardly timed cuts and a camera that rotates around a glass container, effectively erecting an emotional barrier between the audience and the character. While anger can be a potent way to convey helplessness, the remake’s decision to transform a scene of restrained dialogue into a clichéd villainous interrogation sacrifices the haunting tragedy of his story.

The understated characterisation of the 1995 GitS reflects a culture that values emotional restraint and gaman (stoicism) in social conduct, serving a film that values philosophical doubt over platitudes. While its philosophical ideas are still conveyed through expository dialogue, Kusanagi’s emotional interiority is communicated not by declaration but by contextual cues, and a silent shot held that trusts the animators.

The Hollywood instinct to prioritise spectacle and legibility is not wrong, and is understandably shaped by audience demographics. For the 1995 GitS, however, restraint is a pivotal stylistic choice, shaped by cultural approaches to cinema, that bears the load of the story’s quiet devastation and existentialism. When the remake steals the likeness of its predecessor, while filling the stillness and emptiness, it loses the meaning that only accumulates when we trust the frame to speak for itself.

Conclusion

The remake’s decision in adopting Hollywood blockbuster tendencies to serve a mainstream audience isn’t a sin; taken alone, it is a perfectly serviceable blockbuster. Remakes don’t require absolute compliance to the source material – films like The Departed (2006) and The Magnificent Seven (1960) are celebrated for successfully translating Asian narratives into Western contexts while still honouring the essence of the originals. Instead, the remake of GitS masquerades as a faithful remake, yet mines it for parts that can serve its Westernised approach, overriding the fundamentally Japanese style and story of the original that made it so powerful.

Hollywood will never stop remaking successful non-Western films. These remakes, however, don’t need to exist as hollow, cash-grabbing imitations of their originals – with proper care and respect, they can layer the original with new perspectives and introduce foreign films to mainstream Western audiences. Remakes, after all, are testaments to the timeless and universal stories of our humanity.

Bibliography

Film stills courtesy of:

1995 Original: Kodansha, Bandai Visual, & Manga Entertainment.

2017 Remake: Paramount Pictures & DreamWorks Pictures.

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It's 7am, and I'm packed onto the MRT. Between the drones of “Please mind the platform gap”, the 98th Academy Awards play on my phone. Every cinephile in Los Angeles is hosting their own Oscars dinner party, and I am chasing after my bus, the names of award winners streaming through my earphones amidst the din of morning traffic.

For most Singaporean viewers, the Oscars have always been a show that belonged to the West, to Hollywood. And each passing year, it tries its best to justify why the rest of us should care. It's a task host Conan O’Brien has taken seriously, as in his opening monologue this year, he sings the tune of international unity: “31 countries, across 6 continents, are represented this evening”. To him, the Oscars are a spotlight for the oft-overlooked.

To give him credit, O’Brien could be right. This year’s Oscars saw the introduction of the new Best Casting category, with a mixed-race woman taking home the inaugural prize (Cassandra Kulukundis). Autumn Durald Arkapaw was the first woman to win Best Cinematography, and Sentimental Value bagged Norway its first Best International Feature, and Wagner Moura was the first Brazilian nominee for Best Actor. Despite all this, the ceremony still made me tense, the way you brace yourself before a twist you can already see coming.

What are the Oscars for?

Here's the thing: the more the Oscars surprises, the sharper the sting of all the times it doesn't. Because, let’s face it, what's the Oscars without outrage?

While I could speak at length about the snubs at this year's Oscars (and there are many), who wins or who loses isn’t the fundamental issue with these awards. The disappointment audiences feel when viewing the Oscars is symptomatic of a larger issue: the lack of a coherent purpose. Being one of the oldest and only peer-voted awards shows in the industry, the Oscars attempts to distinguish itself from other award shows by purporting to be the most prestigious and, perhaps, definitive list of filmmaking feats in that year.

However, the moment you call something the “best” in cinema, you’ve already disappointed at least half the room — and the Oscars does this year after year.

And in no other category is this best exemplified than in international films. The Oscars isn’t necessarily billed as an American film awards, and yet it most certainly feels like one every year. Despite an increasing number of non-American films being nominated for a range of categories, it comes off as a tokenistic gesture instead of genuine change. Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident didn’t win a single Oscar, but the F1 film did?

Most pointedly, there has never been a Singaporean film at the Oscars. There have been 19 submissions by Singapore in its history, and so far it’s been radio silence. So, it’s understandable that Singaporeans don’t follow these insular award shows. When we watch the Oscars, it’s watching something that doesn’t ever see us.

Though I must pause to acknowledge Nickson Fong, who in 2013 became the first Singaporean to receive an Academy Award for co-inventing an animation technique now foundational to Hollywood blockbusters. He wasn't on the main stage, of course, but at the separate Scientific and Technical Awards. Somehow fitting, that the only Singaporean the Academy has ever recognised was honoured off on the side.

An uncomfortable truth

All these criticisms that I and many others have levied at the Oscars are valid, and Singapore ever having a seat at the Oscars feels like a distant dream. Purely by statistical chance, you'd think at least one of 19 submissions would've caught a voter's eye. We win awards at international film festivals, and we collaborate with major film hubs. We’re by no means a small fry anymore, at least not like we were 20 or 30 years ago…

So what gives?

If you follow the Oscars at all, you would know what an Oscar campaign is — the press junkets, talk shows, and industry profiles in publications like Variety and The Hollywood Reporter that studios deploy to get Academy voters interested in their films. The lengths they go to can be incredible: Sean Baker's Anora spent three times its $6 million production budget on its campaign alone, and walked away with 5 Oscars.

So, here's the irony: the Oscars' biggest flaw is also Singapore's. What reaches Academy voters isn't always the most deserving film — it's the most visible one.

Local films may be great pieces of art, but what’s absent is the conditions that produce Oscar-recognised films — international distribution and big marketing budgets — are conditions our industry hasn't yet been able to meet. Singapore films do well on the festival circuit, but festival darlings and Oscar contenders achieve entirely different feats. The Oscars’ biggest winners may not be the most artistically meritorious, but they are definitely films that balance the tension of artistic and commercial viability the best.

So to brush off the Oscars because they’re just “too western”, or because they don’t award the “best” films of the night, is its own kind of naivety. It would require a belief that cinema is created, watched, and awarded based solely on artistic merit, which will never be possible.

Watching the Oscars, albeit cynically, represents to me a humble admission that cinema exists in a hierarchy in which commerciality is sometimes almost as important as artistry, and the Oscars (perhaps unfortunately) sits at the top of that hierarchy.

What’s Next?

If Singapore wants to evolve, to cast off its position as a footnote in International cinema, it has to reckon with an uncomfortable truth best represented by the Oscars: the best films aren’t just artistically viable. That isn’t to say we should chip away at everything that makes our films unique, or to abandon ambition in experimenting with new techniques and stories. This year's winners proved that you don’t need to do that to make it big.

Filmmakers in Singapore should seek to optimise the artistic-commercial tug-of-war that is inherent in every production. It means appealing to audience tastes without abandoning originality, like how Sinners wholly embraced a unique genre-bending vision without any IP or franchise safety net. It means finding the universal in the specific, like how The Secret Agent tapped on Brazil’s fraught history of political turmoil to tell a story about fear, oppression, and memory.

It means thinking about distribution and accessibility as creative considerations, not afterthoughts. We should strive to do all this not for the Oscars' sake necessarily, but for the sake of a local industry that can sustain itself, grow, and inspire future talents.

Of course, simply acknowledging that commerciality is important won’t do. When filmmakers here struggle to get any idea financed, there’s often no room to consider big marketing or collaboration budgets. None of this is simple, and none of it happens overnight. But the conversation has to move from lamenting to understanding.

Though, there is definitely room for some cautious optimism. Parasite's Best Picture win in 2020 was the obvious landmark, and, this year, a film rooted in the K-pop phenomenon won 2 Oscars. Asian stories aren't waiting at the door anymore. It's time Singapore walked in with them, but we still need to learn how.

So, maybe that's reason enough to keep watching, even when the Oscars makes itself very difficult to love.

Directed and produced by Tan Ning Xuan, Meghan Poh, and Audrey Yong, I Think I’m Going to Die is a mixed media stop motion film in which a young girl finds her body afflicted with a mysterious condition. Panicked, she races through different fantastical worlds, searching for a ‘real’ doctor to diagnose her worsening condition. In its 5-minute runtime, the film makes sure to pack both heart and technical mastery in every single second.

At first glance, it is immediately evident how technically advanced I Think I’m Going to Die is. Exploring coming-of-age struggles through magical realism is not a novel concept, but it is the film’s execution of this theme that truly stuns the viewer. During the post-screening Q&A, Audrey Yong shared that the short began as an experiment to cram as many stop-motion styles as possible into just five minutes. Each fantastical setting, with its unique tone and atmosphere, is matched to a corresponding medium. Felt, clay, and puppetry for an HDB flat, watercolour for the ocean, paper-cut light boxes for a mythical lair, coloured sand for a doctor’s examination room, and much more.

As hybrid animation rises, stop-motion animation increasingly struggles to compete with the slick polish of titles like Arcane and Kpop Demon Hunters, which blend 3D animation with 2D graphics. This is true even as stop-motion films such as ParaNorman and Isle of Dogs continue to earn critical acclaim while struggling to compete commercially. I Think I’m Going to Die confronts this tension head-on with unabashed maximalism, pushing the medium to its fullest, most cacophonic potential. The result is a celebration of stop-motion’s unique textural depth, of its unrivalled physicality and the visual complexity that can be coaxed from painstaking craft. 

While the short’s technical aspects command attention, its thematic resonance give the riot of colour and texture its emotional weight. During the Q&A, Audrey Yong shared that I Think I’m Going to Die was always meant to be “a Girl’s Girl”. Female puberty is usually introduced in sombre conversation, she explained, particularly because the metamorphosis from ‘girl’ to ‘woman’ changes how others perceive you. It is a deeply social transition, and the film taps into the anxiety that comes with it to forge a connection with its female viewers. Hence, drawing from gendered beliefs ranging from 18th-century Victorian medical journals to Nepalese traditions, the film delivers a surreal exploration of this tumultuous, body horror-esque transitionary period. 

This gendered angle explains the film’s escalating sense of anxiety, as well as the darker subtext that becomes apparent in its later sequences. At the start of I Think I’m Going to Die, the girl’s titular catastrophising comes across as hyperbolic, and audiences are meant to be at least slightly amused at her Alice in Wonderland-esque quest to find a ‘real doctor’. However, as the film progresses, what becomes genuinely frightening are the reactions of the ‘doctors’ themselves — the way they seem increasingly disgusted by her body, increasingly willing to deceive and exploit her. As the girl’s source of anxiety shifts from her body to the threat that these ‘doctors’ pose, the film’s whimsical atmosphere slides into much darker territory. Notably, between the talking fish and mythical birds, the most predatory ‘doctor’ comes in the form of a man. A man with a smile, who promises to help her.

Both technically and thematically, I Think I’m Going to Die feels much richer than one would expect possible in such a short piece of animation. It is a real joy to see such eclectic experimentation with stop-motion animation, and I am personally excited to see what its team will achieve next. 

A Different Kind of Auteur

With the passing of the canonical French New Wave directors, retrospective readings of the movement have tended to sort its filmmakers into neat archetypes: Godard as the radical, Truffaut as the autobiographer, Demy as the romantic. Agnès Varda, however, seems to resist any categorisation.

Undoubtedly, she was an important part of the nascent French New Wave with her renowned Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962). Later in her life, however, her filmography sprawls restlessly across themes and mediums. She often tapped into her strong political conscience, releasing films like Vagabond (1985) that reflected her focus on feminist issues, or Black Panthers (1968), which documented the titular Civil Rights Movement group while she lived in the United States. Moreover, no other New Wave director has come close to Varda when it comes to documentary filmmaking, her preferred mode of storytelling in the later years of her life.

Despite the seeming impossibility of consolidation, I believe what unites her work is not thematic or stylistic consistency, but a shared ethos: humility. Through her post-2000s documentaries, Varda, in my view, redefines the auteur as a keen observer, rather than a definite authority.

The Filmmaker as Scavenger: The Gleaners and I (2000)

One of her most beloved documentaries, Gleaners is Varda’s rumination on the practice of gleaning in France, scavenging for things cast aside by society. She travels across the French countryside at first, before shifting to the streets of Paris, surveying the ways gleaning still exists today. From the urban poor who have to glean leftover crops for survival, to a Michelin 2-star chef who gleans ingredients for freshness, the film depicts the lasting vitality of a practice commonly associated with the past.

Through personal interviews with each of these groups, the film lets her subjects do all the talking, avoiding a sanctimonious or imposing tone. Even when interviewing a divorced father living in poverty, gleaning discarded potatoes just to survive, there is no swelling music, no strategic editing to build sympathy. There is only a simple prompt: “Tell me what happened to you.”

Indeed, Varda herself admits the impulse to impose a certain judgement on the poorest of these gleaners, saying that the “pitiful feeling” she felt spurred her on to make the film initially. However, she states that really getting to know these people stopped her from making any “statement”, realising that “[t]hey make the statement. They explain the subject better than anybody.”[1] Just like the subjects of her documentary, Varda is doing the act of gleaning glimpses into different people’s lives, inherently a humble and unobtrusive vocation.

[1] Anderson, M. (2001). The modest gesture of the filmmaker: an interview with Agnes Varda. Cineaste, 26(4), 24-27. https://excocinema.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/agnes_verda_interview.pdf

In an even bolder departure from traditional documentaries, Varda often turns the camera on herself in Gleaners. Equipped with a camcorder, she explores the power of the handheld camera in gleaning unique images that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible. Varda plays a private game with trucks along a highway, pretending to trap them with her hand in front of the camera. She marvels at the newfound possibility of “filming one hand with the other”, revealing the “horror” of age within her wrinkling skin.

Here, too, Varda documents with a humility driven by curiosity. The camera is not used as an instrument of control, but as a companion to her own wandering attention, recording moments that are incidental or even flawed. In one scene, she accidentally leaves her camcorder on, lens cap swinging in frame. Instead of cutting it out, she pairs the moment with jazzy music, letting the moment linger longer than other filmmakers might.

By turning the lens on her own hand, her own filmmaking, Varda resists placing herself above what she films, becoming just another subject she gleans from. The title of the film in its original French is perhaps the most revealing of the fact, as “Les Gleaneurs et la glaneuse” literally translates to “The Gleaners and the female gleaner”. Understanding Varda’s interest in self-interrogation, we see that she identifies as the “female gleaner”, in equal rank to those she portrays in her film.

The Collective Life: The Beaches of Agnès (2008)

In the opening scene of Beaches, Varda’s instinct for self-inquisitiveness is put on obvious display, as she narrates: “I’m playing the role of a little old lady,[...] telling her life story.” While the film is hailed as Varda’s cine-autobiography, the opening lines already signal Varda’s distrust toward the genre. She believes that theatricality underpins self-portraiture. To Agnès, it is an act of performance, rather than a veritable depiction of unfiltered truth.

“For me it’s cinema, it’s a game”, she says. In a memorable sequence, an ostensibly young Varda is playing on the beach. However, after only a few seconds, the camera pans right to reveal the real Varda, as she admits to the camera that she herself isn’t too sure “what it means to recreate [her childhood] like this”, avoiding playing into the self-dramatisation of autobiographical tools like re-enactment (unlike Truffaut, whose film The 400 Blows sees a feature-length fiction loosely based on his unruly childhood). She even leaves in a behind-the-scenes snippet of her speaking to the child actor playing her, playfully undercutting traditional autobiographical techniques.

This sense of play extends to a striking sequence in Varda's reconstruction of an office of her production company, Cine-Tamaris, where she builds a man-made beach in the middle of a street. The sequence is openly artificial: sand strewn haphazardly, “office workers” sporting swimwear, and Agnès begging for an “interest-free loan” from a bank.

When rain begins to fall on the second day of filming, disrupting her plans entirely, Varda does not conceal the failure. Instead, much like the lens cap in Gleaners, she leaves the footage in, embracing the intrusion as part of the game. The rain reveals Varda’s refusal to sanitise or perfect; autobiography, for her, remains contingent, subject to chance and weather, much like her own life. What emerges is an unfettered joie de vivre that is central to Varda’s filmmaking approach, finding beauty in the unforeseen.

Having exposed the limits and artifice of self-portraiture, Varda resists centring herself for long. She quickly turns her camera on others to illuminate key aspects of her own life. These people may not have been the most important, but exist nonetheless in her life in some capacity: a tour of her childhood home becomes an interview with the house’s now-tenant, a serial collector of miniature Swiss trains.

A recollection of her start as a photographer turns into an “In Memoriam” for many of her subjects who have passed on. Even crew members who were involved in the making of Beaches are shown throughout the entire film, particularly in a sequence at the beginning where they help Agnès construct an assemblage of huge mirrors on a beach, signalling metaphorically that Agnès’ reflection on her life is only accomplished through the help of others.

She shows how autobiography is a convincing genre of documentary filmmaking that can be elevated not through self-indulgence, but through humility and connection with others.

The Camera in Varda’s Hands

Perhaps one of the more subtle ways in which the French New Wave has influenced cinematic culture is in directing how we think about experimentation and non-traditional filmmaking. At least personally, the word “experimentation” conjures images of rupture: jump cuts, confrontational politics, and artists bent on redefining film itself. This understanding is shaped largely by the movement’s loudest figures, whose innovations announced themselves as acts of rebellion against a cinema with which they were discontent.

Agnès Varda offers a quieter alternative. Her filmmaking is experimental, both Gleaners and Beaches being non-traditional documentary projects. But she does not seek to overhaul cinematic language. Instead, her unique style emerges from a desire to represent life as she encounters it: playful, contingent, and shared with others. The camera in her hands is not a weapon or a megaphone, but a means of looking — one guided by curiosity rather than certainty.

This curiosity is inseparable from humility. The lasting influence of her narrative work is important to her legacy, but her documentaries reveal her core as an artist. She desmystifies the artistic process from an act of creation to an act of modesty. And then, it doesn’t hurt to throw in a little playfulness, a little love. She shows us that nobody is incapable of creating, if they would just sit back and observe without judgement.

To take a page out of Varda’s book, it feels right to let her have the final word in this article. In her last film, Varda par Agnès (2019), she offers a piece of advice that distills a lifetime of great work into commonsense wisdom: “Nothing is banal… if you film people with love and empathy, you’d find them extraordinary.”

Last summer, I watched Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing for the first time. I loved the film immediately. The energy of Lee’s direction oozed out from every frame. My excitement was high going into his latest, Highest 2 Lowest, but for a while, I was a little confused.

I wasn’t the only one一the film garnered a rather muted response, seemingly coming and going without much of an impact. For a while, I was worried that Lee had lost his touch, but quickly realised that he’s pulling off a masterful gambit here. He’s made a personal film disguised as an adaptation, using the film form itself to mirror his protagonists’ journey in an almost metafictional way.

An adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 masterpiece High and Low, Highest 2 Lowest reunites Lee with Denzel Washington, the fifth film in their long collaboration, dating back to 1990’s Mo’ Better Blues and the first since Inside Man in 2006. Washington plays David King, a music executive on the cusp of selling the controlling stake in Stackin’ Hits Records, the record company he had built since his youth.

David King, a Man Adrift

We first meet him ensconced in his DUMBO penthouse, formulating a last-minute plan to gather together enough money to buy back the company to try and return it to its, and his, former glory. He describes the looming sale of Stackin’ Hits Records as abandoning the very thing that he took his entire adult life trying to build, but Pam, his wife, isn’t so sure. 

She reminds him of how he’d walk across the bridge to her apartment listening to new artists when they first started dating, showing up late but so excited from the new discoveries he was making. His million-dollar ears, the recognition of talent that used to be the core of his passion and his art, seem to have taken a backseat as he’s become financially successful. As he goes about his day taking meetings and attempting to set up this deal, we see that artists are now ambushing him in the lobby, trying to get heard. His son, Trey, also sends him songs by new artists that he consistently fails to listen to. 

It’s not hard to see that this deal is a Hail Mary from a man who feels adrift from his purpose.

Lee and his cinematographer Matthew Libatique shoot the cityscape from the Kings’ windows with such wide lenses that the edge of the frame almost seems to be decaying, folding away in real time. The digital cinematography is suffocating, reflecting how David’s high-flying life has distanced him from the driving force of his creativity.

The Lifelessness and Insufficiency of Images

Additionally, Lee punctuates the scenes in the King family home with shots of the art and framed photos on the walls. Most of these are taken directly from Spike Lee’s personal collection. They represent David’s titanic taste, and are by Black artists, and many are of Black luminaries. However, by cutting to the paintings at the start of a scene, and lingering on them briefly before cutting to the action, they become associated with a certain stasis. They contribute to the suffocating nature of the penthouse, artworks that carry such heavy legacies, just like the one David is labouring under.

Before the deal can happen, however, David gets news that his son, Trey, has been kidnapped. Though he is initially willing to pay the ransom, we quickly learn that the kidnapper has taken Trey’s best friend, Kyle, by mistake. Enter: moral dilemma.

When the police first show up to their penthouse after the kidnapping, Pam clears the dining room for them to set up home base, and there’s a shot of her gathering up family photos, as she’s dwarfed by a looming Basquiat. The camera treats it with reverence, panning down from it as the orchestral score swells, but Pam herself pays it no mind. Her concern is the family photos with Trey that represent their memories, though they are obviously insufficient given the context. A literally towering work of art, ignored for matters of the heart.

More generally, David’s interior design deliberately positions him within a lineage of greatness. He is surrounded by framed photographs of James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, and Aretha Franklin in his office, and he asks them how he should resolve his moral dilemma. He then grabs a framed magazine cover of himself from his youth and holds a photo of his son over it, beseeching them to talk to each other. They can’t speak, of course. Once again, he has to break free of his overattachment to the lifeless static image and make a decision for himself.

Bait-and-Switch, Lee-as-David

And break free he does. David’s decision to take action is when the film shifts into the next gear. Lee shoots Detective Bridges straight-on as he’s explaining the plan, a direct address to the audience. The “safe” and traditional orchestral score gives way to a lively piano score, and Bridges declares that it’s showtime.

As they do their final preparations, David, Pam, and Trey are blocked in a way that approximates the figures in Frederick J Brown’s painting Billie, Lester, Fats, and Duke behind them. There’s a syncing between the artwork and David’s actions, the static images now representing the beginning of something and not the end. Toni Morrison watches over his shoulder as he heads into the city一for the first time, perhaps, David is living up to the old masters.

This is where Lee shows his hand: He has lulled us into complacency in the first third of the film, the lifelessness of the editing and blocking seemingly evidence of an artist past his prime, coasting on his own past genius. Yet, once David descends from his throne and into the city, there is a noticeable change in the cinematography. Film and Super 8 footage are woven into the movie, and it feels like it’s been given a shot of adrenaline. This includes an extended Puerto Rico Day parade during the handoff/chase sequence. It’s by far the most colourful sequence of the film, and crackles with the energy of the city. The Kings, and the film by extension, are so far removed from the ordinary people on the ground. Lee forces us to acknowledge them, to bathe in their liveliness and joy. That the plan gets waylaid by a group of rowdy Yankees fans is a reminder that you can only isolate yourself for so long in your hall of mirrors and frames.

Lee is playing the long game here, having set a trap for the audience the same way David intends to do for the kidnapper. David is revealed to be an avatar for Lee, and in allowing David to plunge into the thick of the action himself, Lee beats back his doubters and proves himself to still be the dynamic filmmaker we remember him to be.

After Kyle is safely recovered, we get a quick succession of shots as a transition: for the first time in the film, we see a series of artworks. We first see a photograph of a fist, then a drawing of an upturned arm, fist still clenched, then we see a photograph of Muhammad Ali looking down, almost like a primitive flipbook. David is finally (re-)becoming a man of action, and the static artworks that have represented his stasis are becoming a moving image.

(No) Exit

A flipbook is not a film, however. There is still more to be done. Frustrated by the police’s speed, David takes matters into his own hands, personally tracking down the kidnapper, an aspiring rapper who kept trying and failing to get his attention. The rapper’s studio is deep in the basement of an apartment building, and as David weaves through dingy hallways, we see multiple “EXIT”s stenciled into the walls. 

His arc is complete一for the first time in a long time, he is actively seeking an artist out, and he will not be held back by the insufficiency of the static image, flouting the exit signs and chasing Yung Felon out of his studio and onto an empty train.

This culminates in one final confrontation between David and the rapper, Yung Felon. In jail and facing multiple charges, Yung Felon offers to sign with Stackin’ Hits to turn his newfound notoriety into a lucrative deal for both parties. Yung Felon now represents the lure of money and fame, while David is trying to stick to his principles. Lee intervenes once again in the film form, fracturing the frame, positioning the two characters in a split-screen opposite each other. They are face-to-face, but instead of shooting them side-on, the two frames are shot at an angle, such that the glass between them hinges out between them. The edges of the frame are no longer decaying, instead thrumming with a new focus.

As Yung Felon tries to pitch David on his idea, the camera zooms in such that any division between the two frames disappears. Just as it seems like they might come to some sort of agreement, Lee cuts out of that shot set-up and goes to a front-on shot, the actors talking and looking right at us. The glass between them has become the cinema screen. When David finally turns down his offer, Yung Felon spits on the glass, the allure of money revealing the insufficiency, the falsity of the screen, of the image.

In the final scene, the Kings are auditioning a new artist, recommended by Trey, in their home. Her name is Sula Janie Zimmie, and as she explains the literary genesis of the name, we cut to framed copies of Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston books. Those are towering works of literature, but their lineage only continues in people like Sula. As she starts singing, accompanied only by a piano, the production kicks in non-diegetically, and it’s almost like David can hear it too. David and Lee dance across the boundaries of the film form, and as David says, “Let’s get to work,” it’s also Spike Lee reassuring us that he will continue to make vital, electric cinema, and I can’t wait to see where he goes from here.

About the Author:

An avid consumer of all kinds of art, and an occasional dabbler in creating said art, Fengyu enjoys writing about film as a way to express their love of the medium through close attention. Having graduated last year from Brown University after double majoring in Film and Political Science, they are based in Singapore for the time being, attempting to find a way to balance their twin passions. You should bug them on Letterboxd at @fengyu33.

Benjamin Tan’s The Beast in the Woods is a quietly haunting animated short film that explores guilt and redemption with remarkable restraint. Centred on a young girl and a mysterious creature that inhabits the surrounding forest, the story unfolds less as a conventional narrative and more as a meditation on consequence. Simple in its visual design yet emotionally dense, the film relies on atmosphere, rhythm, and implication rather than exposition. Its minimalism is deliberate, allowing the story’s psychological weight to surface without being overstated.

The animation style is sparse and understated, with simplified forms and a dark, muted colour palette that immediately sets a somber tone. Instead of aiming for realism, the piece embraces abstraction, relying on shape, shadow, and movement to express emotion. This sense of restraint carries over into the sound design, which is similarly minimalist. Silence and carefully placed ambient sound effects handle much of the storytelling, building dread and reinforcing the emotional impact of the visuals.

Structurally, the short unfolds in a fragmented, non-linear manner. Events are revealed through cross-cutting and visual echoes, encouraging the viewer to actively piece the story together. Match cuts and repeated imagery create connections across time and perspective, reinforcing the sense that the film is less interested in what happens than in how it is remembered. This approach mirrors the internal logic of guilt itself, which is circular, obsessive, and resistant to closure.

At the centre of the narrative remains that peculiar connection between the girl and the creature in the woods. Their relationship, though never spelled out in explicit terms, forms the emotional backbone of the narrative. What begins as fear gradually gives way to something more complicated, shaped by misunderstanding, inherited belief, and the pressure to conform. Rather than offering clear moral divides, the film invites the viewer to remain with discomfort and ambiguity.

One of the film’s most striking motifs is the recurring image of the eye, which functions as a symbol of perception, judgment, and responsibility. Seeing, in this film, is never neutral. To look is to interpret, and interpretation carries consequences. Through this motif, The Beast in the Woods shows how communities create their own beliefs, how rituals can hide empathy, and how violence is often justified simply because people are certain they are right.

There is an unmistakable literary quality to the film, reminiscent of dark folklore or Edgar Allan Poe’s bleak moral landscapes. Themes of cult-like obedience, humanity’s fraught relationship with animals, and the thin line between protection and cruelty all surface organically through the film’s imagery. The choice to tell this story through animation is crucial. The beast, in particular, feels emotionally credible in animated form, allowing the film to maintain its symbolic weight without breaking immersion.

Ultimately, The Beast in the Woods is less interested in providing answers than in examining what comes after. It dwells on the psychological cost of belief and the quiet weight of regret. By trusting its audience and resisting the urge to over-explain, the film becomes a striking meditation on guilt; one that suggests redemption is neither easy nor assured, but deeply and painfully human.

Author’s bio:

Chinmaya’s personality runs on cinema, from bingeing films to dissecting every frame. Posting reviews on Letterboxd and Instagram as TheFilmBoi, he’s happiest talking movies all day long. Engineer by trade, filmmaker by passion, he believes life’s better with a little Nolan mind-bend, and a story that keeps you guessing.

Casting a Light on the Dance of Darkness is an intriguing documentary short about Singapore’s sole practitioner of “Butoh”, a rare form of performance art originating from Japan. Director E-Vyn Toh successfully delivers on Our Grandfather Story’s (OGS) established approach to crafting sensitive, thoughtful portraits of their subjects. Going a step further, she seizes a unique opportunity to cross over from passive observer to advocate, crafting a subtle yet immersive experience that invites thoughtful discussion on tolerance and acceptance in Singapore.

If you were to ask me to describe “Butoh” after seeing it for the first time, one of the first words out of my mouth would be “exotic”. But that word does very little to describe anything about the dance itself. The word focuses on distance, describing a reaction to foreignness that sets our senses atingle when greeted by the unfamiliar.

But exoticism is a matter of perspective. The filmmakers understand this, and while the striking visual character of a Butoh performance is virtually impossible to neutralize, it is possible to carefully guide an audience past their initial reactions to Butoh, and into a more nuanced close-up of its performer, XUE.

XUE’s first encounter with Butoh was neither in Singapore nor Japan, but in the vibrant counterculture of New York City. Her emotional journey both abroad and locally, and her struggles with belonging and acceptance are articulated with confidence, and from a great deal of experience.

E-Vyn Toh demonstrates an ability to be won over by a subject yet maintain a sense of objectivity. It’s that objectivity that enables her to craft a subtle yet arresting piece that draws its audience deep into territory some might otherwise deem too “exotic”. Her ability to draw out both the thoughtful and passionate sides of XUE enables her to paint an intriguingly relatable picture of a unique Singaporean story.

Clear parallels are drawn between the life XUE knew overseas, and the one she is actively forging for herself in Singapore. The filmmakers demonstrate tact in selecting information that is most resonant with audiences, while maintaining a degree of privacy. We gain a sense of XUE’s experiences overseas, focusing on her encounters with the various counterculture movements of NYC. As audience members, we can’t help but contrast that with what we know of our own culture in Singapore, and the film invites us to wonder exactly how well XUE might be adjusting to her home turf.

XUE’s journey does not point fingers at any gaping problem or injustice in Singapore. Rather, her journey with Butoh serves as a catalyst for broader discussion about our own capacity for acceptance and tolerance. Butoh is presented purely as a form of self-discovery and expression. Her father’s decision to ignore her interest in Butoh could be compared to the attitudes of many in Singapore who, despite our outspoken multiculturalism, still retain a measure of “Not in my backyard” attitude when something too foreign or unsettling comes along.

One might argue that Singapore simply has neither the mass nor the obligation to host and sustain every practice, culture and fad that finds its way onto our shores. While that may certainly be true, XUE’s story reminds us that the ones who are most affected by our acceptance and rejection are often fellow Singaporeans, on their own journey of discovery, hoping to find some reassurance along the way.

The future of Butoh in Singapore remains uncertain, whether more will join XUE and grow the local practice, or if it will turn out to be a fleeting occurrence. Whatever the case may be, that uncertainty is all the more reason for us to show some hospitality while it dances on our shores.

Commentary – The Murmuring Salt: Royston Tan’s Health Promotion Board videos

After a series of conflicts with authorities over his much-celebrated but equally censored works 15 (2003), Royston Tan left Singapore in 2003. From that point, his name became naturally associated with the subversive and rebellious undercurrent of Singapore’s local juvenile gang culture. His explicit and authentic depictions of violence, hormonal intensity, and the vitalistic yearning to live fully in the face of looming death have remained central motifs throughout his creative career.

In recent years, Tan has increasingly participated in public projects, including the 2020 and 2023 National Day Parades, collaborations with government agencies such as the Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), and direct involvement in the 2023 Presidential Election. Financially, he acknowledged that “income from shooting advertisements is more stable than making movies”1. Strategically, such projects are crucial for staying relevant in the local art scene. Politically, he has moved beyond the naiveté of juvenile passive-aggressiveness and self-destruction, now aiming for active intervention.

However, this hope seems destined to be in vain. His two recent low-sodium-diet campaign videos, commissioned by the Health Promotion Board (HPB), illustrate how creative individuals can be exploited by state power under the guise of public welfare. In the best case, one loses their independent voice. In the worst case, they become indistinguishable from power itself, perpetuating its dominance and serving conservative forces.

Salt (verb):3fraudulently make (a mine) appear to be a profitable one by placing rich ore into it.

--Oxford Languages

Both For the Love of Taste (2024) and Trust No Tongue (2023) parody various Hong Kong cinema genres. In Taste, it’s Wong Kar-Wai’s famous steakhouse scene from In the Mood for Love (2000), where Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung subtly hint at their intense yet immoral feelings for each other. The original scene is intimate and emotional, with a sense of privacy heightened by tight composition and restrained camera movement. The conversations are deliberately understated and pretentiously casual, yet beneath the surface, emotions rage. This underlying tension collapses the world into a suspended space that solely encompasses the two lovers. Alain Badiou’s notion that love is the truth of ‘Two’ may serve as the perfect footnote to this scene.

In Tan’s parody, the safety of the world of ‘two’ [ET1] in the original scene is replaced by instability brought on by the presence of ‘the third’. Throughout the first half of the conversation, the audience is repeatedly led to believe that the two lovers are about to end their relationship, as they are each the ‘third’ in the other’s marriage. This uncertainty is heightened by deliberately breaking spatial continuity, using techniques such as shooting into mirrors. Only at the end of the scene is the punchline revealed – the ominous ‘third’ is none other than salt.

However, the punchline simultaneously suspends the validity of the story with its absurdity. There is no logical connection between ‘salt’ and the rest of the plot. Why salt? One has to ask. Salt is so forcefully foregrounded, almost shoved into the audience’s face. The ‘salt’ could easily be anything ‘inserted’ at will. It could be Tony Leung smoking a cigarette (then it becomes an anti-smoking campaign), or Maggie Cheung drinking bubble tea (who knows? It then becomes an anti-sugar campaign). The point is, ‘salt’ is something violently inserted into the original narrative, disrupting a private sphere and a personal encounter. Its only validity is in its ability to catch us by surprise, momentarily making us believe ‘it is true.’ An elegant story is invoked to mask the lack of substance in the didactic message. Absurdity catches us off-guard, creates a temporary power vacuum, and produces an access point for power to install itself into the personal narrative.

Salt (verb):3bto add something secretly

also: to insert or place secretly.

--Merriam-Webster dictionary

Tongue, on the other hand, draws from a less defined genre, blending elements of gangster and kung fu films. In Tan’s version, the personified organs, led by ‘Master Brain’, must catch the imposterwho allowed the salt in. This plot appears to stand in stark contrast to the previous one – where the first appeals to absurdity, this one appeals to reason (the brain).

In fact, Tongue aligns perfectly with a Foucauldian critique of modern power, where power becomes invisible and is internalised by the individual in the form of self-surveillance. The organs no longer work together to sustain life; instead, they turn against one another, accusing and surveilling each other.

Nevertheless, the trace of power is still identifiable. In one scene, a TV is abruptly lowered from the ceiling, showing footage of a man devouring extra dipping sauce, prompting ‘Master Brain’ to accuse Mr. Tongue of consuming too much salt. But what do those second-person point-of-view shots on the TV even refer to? Whose ghostly perspective is this? Who is this camera that constantly surveils us as we go about our everyday lives?

Behind Royston Tan’s name echoes the insistent murmur of collective discourse, driven by the quiet force of state power.

All of a sudden, I find myself exhausted by the fake enthusiasm in the voice-over at the end of each video, boasting about the health benefits of a low-sodium diet. I can’t tell you how much I miss the rapid-fire rattling of the young gangsters in 15, reciting their gang poems. That voice feels so familiar, so genuine. It is not the voice of state power, but of our gangster friends from Moon Sect, Fury Hounds, East Dragon, 18 Umbrellas, Hup Soon Heng, Red Raiders, Froggie Gang, Upright Gang…

Needless to say, involving established filmmakers in welfare projects remains an efficient and convenient way to improve the visual quality of the campaigns and integrate artists into the public discourse. Both Tongue and Taste have gained around one million views on HPB’s YouTube channel, making them some of the platform’s top hits. Ideally, this can be a non-zero-sum game. In both Tongue and Taste, we can still see Tan’s clear effort to balance his role as a government mouthpiece with that of a stylistic director. It seems that all creative individuals involved in public projects often face a contradictory state of mind. On one hand, as advocates, they are tasked with engaging and influencing the public. On the other hand, as independent voices, they bear the responsibility of exposing power rather than concealing it. While didactic informational videos often explicitly showcase the state’s power but fail to engage the public, Royston Tan’s work highlights the other side of the same long-standing dilemma – with his undeniable artistic virtuosity, his engaging work unintentionally conceals the presence of power.

Reference article:

1 https://www.zaobao.com.sg/entertainment/story20240919-4758001

[ET1]Suggest using single rather than double quotation marks for words that are not direct quotes, just to differentiate.

Hope. Glory. Disappointment. Setback. Fatigue. Satisfaction. Frustration. Achievement. Along with every other feeling.

In those few seconds, the 100 metre dash becomes a microcosm of life itself. 

In his sophomore animated feature film, Director Kenji Isaisawa brings 100 Metres, an adaptation of a Amanga with the same title, to moving life. The film follows Togashi, a boy who is naturally gifted at sprinting, from sixth grade all the way to adulthood. In his schooling years, he meets Komiya, who is full of determination but lacking technique. They forge a bond through their passion for running, and eventually become fierce rivals on the track. 

While the majority of sports films revolve around themes of resilience and the power of indomitable human spirit, 100 Metres probes deeper into the ‘why’s. What exactly is it about ourselves that makes us want to push ourselves to the limits? There’s something innate about our humanity that drives us to obsession, staking everything on a 10-second sprint, both literally and metaphorically. 

These philosophical musings are grounded in reality. In the sporting world, for instance the quadrennial FIFA World Cup competition for football, players often play through potentially career-ending injuries for a mere shot at glory. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to etch your name into history. “Give up your body because it’s just a collection of cells. Glory is forever,” the top runner in 100 Metres’ universe comments. Although most of us are not professional athletes, the same ideology rings true. In our Singapore society, hustle culture remains a predominant attitude, as we continuously seek the highest form of attainment, whether in wealth or stature. This brutal belief also exists in Komiya, as his determination to achieve success hints towards physical ruin. 

But 100 Metres offers a counter - that glory can be rendered meaningless. “It’s lonely at the top” might be a common adage in the sporting world to mock those far beneath the victor, but it takes on a different quality in the film. The further and faster our characters run, the more isolating the journey becomes, as there is no one to run alongside them. Nevertheless, we witness the athletes in the film essentially destroy their bodies for a mere shot at glory. 

*THE FOLLOWING TWO PARAGRAPHS CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION, OR SKIP TO THE END.*

Komiya is consistently warned about his shoddy running form throughout the film. Having broken his leg once at a younger age, he struggles to reach his full potential over a fear of permanently damaging his leg. Yet, he continues the pursuit, suffering through, sacrificing his body wholly to break all the running records in Japan. It’s a painful process for the audience to witness, as we reconcile with this warped sense of purpose. Running becomes a joyless act that is only motivated by desire.

On the other hand, beyond ‘winning’, the film also tackles the opposite: the harsh reality of ‘coping with losing’. In his schooling years, Togashi is hailed as a prodigy, finding joy in the recognition that comes with winning. In high school, racing with his teammates allows him to find an appreciation for the sport again. However, these achievements come crashing down as Togashi ages. He loses his joy for running, and injuries have left him a mediocre runner on the decline. The struggles of the “gifted child syndrome” manifest into a greater struggle of purpose. 

*SPOILER ENDS HERE*

100 Metres also utilises an unorthodox form of animation, with slower frame rates and a heavy emphasis on rotoscoping. Such techniques allow for the physicality of the characters to shine through, allowing the running sequences to feel visceral and emotive. There’s a long take in the middle of the film utilising the technique. As Togashi prepares for a race, the rain pours relentlessly, emphasising our main character’s emotional turmoil. It’s a mesmerising one take which manages to capture the beautiful complexity of running — an amalgamation of frustration and tenacity. 

Although the film largely went under the radar, I’d argue it was one of the best animated films in both technical prowess and storytelling in 2025. It’s a shame it has been overlooked by award ceremonies, as 100 Metres moves beyond a typical sports drama to become an exploration of the human psyche, our ‘whys’, and the very essence of our being.