About the award
Established as the National Youth Film Awards since 2015, the Singapore Youth Film Festival (SYFF) serves as a national platform celebrating the achievements of exceptional young filmmakers while fostering a deeper appreciation for local films and filmmaking. SYFF builds upon its legacy of fostering award-winning filmmakers.
The SYFF Youth Inspiration Award was introduced in 2019 to recognise and honour young industry professionals who have made exemplary contributions towards the filmmaking industry in Singapore.
About the award recipient
Giselle Lin Xuan Qing is a Singaporean writer-director.
In 2021, her undergrad thesis short film, Yi Yi (Time Flows in Strange Ways on Sundays), premiered in competition at the Locarno Film Festival. In 2023, she returned to Locarno’s Pardi di Domani international competition with her documentary short I look into the mirror and repeat to myself. The film went on to win the Critics Prize at the QCinema International Film Festival 2023 and the Best Singapore Short Film Award at the Singapore International Film Festival 2023.
She is currently developing two feature-length projects, one of which, Midnight Blue Spring, won the grand prize of the inaugural Locarno Residency. Most recently, her short film, Children’s Day, premiered in the Berlinale Shorts competition at the Berlin International Film Festival 2025.
Greatly inspired by girlhood, nature, the impermanence of memory, and the emotional quality present in all things (living or not), she also enjoys the analogue process (feeling, making, hoping, waiting) across all mediums. Giselle is always exploring what it means for us to inhabit/inhibit a story (and for a story to inhabit/inhibit us), and hopes to forever make films filled with human truth, touch, and taste—films that people feel before understanding.
Recipient’s Message
Though I'm really thankful to *SCAPE and SYFF for this award, I'm not sure what I did to deserve this title, and to be honest, I feel slightly embarrassed to be the one to receive it.
Frankly, all my achievements would have been impossible if not for the immense support of my loving and nurturing collaborators. Working with them has been the greatest gift to my practice, and I would have achieved nothing on my own.
Every film I make scares me like my first, and I always find myself approaching it like it would be my last. Who knows if I get to make another film? Making a film not only takes courage, it is also a huge privilege. Some people ask me, "Even now?" and my answer is yes. But while that used to incapacitate me with anxiety, these days, I've slowly come to embrace it as a comforting thought. Isn't it quite silly that as much as I inspire you (somehow), I still very much feel like the girl I was in film school, learning how to format a screenplay and block actors for the first time. I still have so much more to learn and to give, so much more to say, and I still look up to the same Singaporean filmmakers I did ten years ago when I was just starting out, even now when they consider me their contemporary.
The nature of filmmaking, especially in a community as small as ours, is symbiotic and cyclical, and I am grateful to be constantly reminded of it, while I'm teaching children's filmmaking workshops, as I'm watching a film in a packed cinema, and even just as I'm hanging out with film friends and colleagues. So, as much as I try my best and hope to inspire, I always find myself being the one who is inspired.
I think if I have any advice to whoever is reading this, it would be to get to know yourself better. What speaks to you, what moves your soul? That is your truth and your voice. Take care of it, stay tender and open, and everything else will get easier. Sometimes, all that we have to say is already within us; we just have to try and find it.