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Following the excellent “A Land Imagined” that netted him a Golden Leopard from Locarno among other awards, Yeo Siew Hua has come up with a new movie that also attempts to stretch the conventions of genre filmmaking by incorporating intense art-house elements in it.

Stranger Eyes screened at Venice International Film Festival

The film throws the viewer directly into what is happening, as we witness a couple, Junyang and Peiying, whose baby has been missing for months, checking old home videos. The next scene with a video though, is a completely different thing, as a DVD that arrived at their apartment shows recordings of them that they have not shot themselves. More DVDs arrive, portraying more and more intimate moments of the couple, with the two, and the ever-present Shuping, Junyang’s mother, eventually going to the police, where officer Zheng suggests patience and installing cameras in the apartment complex the couple lives in.

With Stranger Eyes, ascendant Singaporean filmmaker Yeo Siew Hua transmogrifies what looks at first like a creepy crime thriller into something much more tricksy, potent and ultimately puzzling, yet still rooted in recognizable human fragility. Already scheduled to travel to further festivals after its premiere in competition at Venice, this cerebral, downbeat mediation on voyeurism, exhibitionism, identity, guilt and loss — all that fun stuff — could ride a wave of critical support to niche distribution beyond Asia, especially in cinephile markets.

Yeo’s work is known for its playful, pretzel-y approach to chronology and nested narratives, and while Stranger Eyes doesn’t dive as far as his A Land Imagined did into the meta end of the pool, it gets its feet wet. Like its predecessor, it starts in the middle and then flashes back, and drops in strange moments where time seems to shift for characters who overlap and parallel one another.

After becoming the first Singaporean filmmaker to win Locarno’s Golden Leopard for A Land Imagined, Yeo Siew Hua will break new ground again with mystery thriller Stranger Eyes, which is the first Singapore film to premiere in-competition at the Venice Film Festival.

The Singapore-Taiwan-France-u.S. co-production stars a Taiwanese ensemble cast featuring legendary actor-director Lee Kang-Sheng, Wu Chien-Ho, Annica Panna and Vera Chen. Malaysian actor Pete Teo and Singaporean actress Xenia Tan also appear in the film.

Yeo conceived the Stranger Eyes project more than 10 years ago but he and Akanga Film Asia’s veteran producer Fran Borgia hit several “dead ends” with funding.

“We decided that we were going to try something else and pitch different projects, so that’s how A Land Imagined came about,” Yeo told Deadline.

A Land Imagined, Yeo’s second feature, also went on to clinch Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Film...

At first it seems a premise shamelessly lifted from Michael Haneke’s “Caché”: A couple is disconcerted to receive an unmarked DVD in their mailbox, playing it to find footage of themselves being unwittingly filmed as they go about their day. But just as Haneke’s film took what seemed like a starting point for an effective domestic horror movie and pushed it into thorny sociopolitical territory, the slippery, shape-shifting psychodrama “Stranger Eyes” likewise has more on its mind than just the question of who’s watching who. Solving one mystery unexpectedly quickly before diving into deeper, more searching uncertainties of human behavior and relationships, the third feature from Singaporean writer-director Yeo Siew Hua gradually reveals a broken heart beneath its sleek, chilly veneer.

Yeo’s previous feature, the fluorescent neo-noir “A Land Imagined,” put him on the auteur map in 2018 by winning the top prize at Locarno, and...

Full of false leads and meandering shifts of focus, Singaporean director Yeo Siew Hua’s story of a missing child initially appears to be a straight-up thriller. Here is a young couple with their child Little Bo, being filmed in the park by Bo’s overbearing grandmother. Here they are at home, miserable shells of their former selves, watching all the home movies they can find in the hope of finding a hint of what might have happened to Little Bo, who has now been missing for three months.

Her father Junyang (Wu Chien-ho) comes in with sandwiches; he could be sleep-walking. Peiying (Annica Panna), her mother, hasn’t bothered to dress properly; she seems to be all eyes, staring at the screen. There is no hint of the glamorous clubber we will see later, as the films of the family’s lives before their loss keep popping up. The...

Stranger Danger

“Stranger Eyes,” Yeo Siew Hua’s powerful film about surveillance and the surveilled, has been selected as the opening title for the Golden Horse Film Festival in Taiwan. The film, which is structured as a co-production between Singapore and Taiwan, stars Taiwan film icon Lee Kang-sheng alongside Wu Chien-ho, Vera Chen and Anicca Panna.

In ‘Stranger Eyes,’ a young couple begins to receive strange videos after the mysterious disappearance of their baby daughter and realize that someone has been filming their daily life — even their most intimate moments. As the identity of the voyeur and the truth behind the videos are revealed, the family starts to crumble.

The Taiwan screening will represent the film’s Asian premiere and its first public screening after having its world premiere this week in Venice. Yeo’s previous title “A Land Imagined” won two prizes at the Golden Horse Film Awards.

The...

Yeo Siew Hua’s surveillance drama Stranger Eyes, which is competing for the Golden Lion at the ongoing Venice Film Festival, is set to open the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (Tghff) in November.

The Singapore-set Chinese-language film features a strong Taiwanese cast, including the two main leads Wu Chien-Ho (A Sun) and Golden Horse best actor Lee Kang-Sheng (Stray Dogs), actress Vera Chen and newcomer Annica Panna, as well as Taiwanese crew such as legendary sound designer Tu Duu-Chih.

This will mark the Asian premiere at Tghff, which will take place from November 7-24.

The film took part in...

“Stranger Eyes,” Singaporean director Yeo Siew Hua‘s feature on modern surveillance culture, has been sold by Playtime to a raft of territories ahead of its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

The film, which is in contention for the Golden Lion at Venice, revolves around a young couple who is grappling with the mysterious disappearance of their baby daughter when they start receiving strange videos, realizing that someone has been filming their daily life. The police set up surveillance around their home to catch the voyeur, but the family starts to crumble as secrets unravel under the scrutiny.

In the run up to its premiere on the Lido, the film has been sold by Playtime to Italy (Europictures), Spain (La Aventura), Baltics (A-One), Portugal (Leopardo Filmes) and Benelux (September Films).

The helmer explained in the press notes for the film that Singapore was the ideal backdrop for...

The first trailer has been unveiled for Singaporean filmmaker Yeo Siew Hua‘s “Stranger Eyes,” which is in the main competition at the Venice Film Festival.

In the film, after the mysterious disappearance of their baby daughter, a young couple receives strange videos and realises someone has been filming their daily life — even their most intimate moments. The police sets up surveillance around their home to catch the voyeur, but the family starts to crumble as secrets unravel under the scrutiny of eyes watching them from all sides.

Yeo, whose “A Land Imagined” won the Locarno Film Festival’s top prize in 2018, has cast acclaimed Taiwanese actors Lee Kang-Sheng (“What Time Is It There?”, “Days”) and Wu Chien-Ho (“A Sun”) in the film. Other key cast include newcomers Anicca Panna and Xenia Tan, and veterans Vera Chen (“Boluomi”) and Pete Teo (“Barbarian Invasion”).

The film is structured as a Singapore-Taiwan-France-u.

Yeo Siew Hua, the Singaporean director whose “A Land Imagined” won the Locarno Film Festival’s top prize in 2018, has cast acclaimed Taiwanese actors Lee Kang-Sheng and Wu Chien-Ho (“A Sun”) in his new “Stranger Eyes.”

The film, a thriller with domestic surveillance at its core, is currently shooting. It is set to wrap post-production by early 2024 and start a festival run thereafter. International sales are handled by France’s Playtime.

The Golden Horse-nominated Wu plays Darren, a struggling young father whose baby daughter has gone missing. When mysterious footage appears of his private and intimate life, Darren suspects that his neighbor Goh, a supermarket supervisor, is the voyeur linked to his daughter’s disappearance. Goh is portrayed by Lee, who is best-known for his three-decade-plus collaboration with Golden Lion-winning director Tsai Ming-liang. Increasingly frantic, Darren takes it upon himself to stalk Goh, meaning that the hunted becomes hunter.

“It...

Exclusive: Distribution and sales outfit Mutiny Pictures has added a trio of features to its release slate for this year.

The company has taken North American rights on Born To Be Human, Lily Ni’s queer medical drama which follows a 14-year-old boy who undergoes a metamorphosis without realizing what is going on. Mutiny will release in the fall.

The deal was negotiated by Jonathan Barkan for Mutiny Pictures and Princeton Holt of Hewes Pictures on behalf of Ni and Yi. It was produced by Kevin Yi of Flying Key Movie Co and stars Lee Ling-Wei, Vera Chen, Alice Lee, and Chao-te Yin.

Mutiny has also taken North American rights on erotic cyberthriller Graphic Designs. Written and directed by Andy Edwards, the film was produced by Scott Jeffrey and Rebecca Matthews.

It stars David Wayman, Sian Altman, and May Kelly in the story of a reclusive man who, when he...

As many people struggle to make a living in their home country or region, in South-East Asia and many other parts of the world, the flow of migrant workers brings a variety of issues for many cultures. Whereas the economic factor has to be taken into account, the fact that these people at times live a life aside from the society where they found work is quite troublesome, leading to isolation and a growing sense of detachment, which is further emphasized by their relatives still being in their home country. In his short feature “Nia’s Door”, Malaysian director Lau Kek-huat tells the story of a Filipino migrant worker, who has taken up a job as a housemaid in a Taiwanese household. The movie, which was nominated for Best Short Film at Taipei Film Festival 2016 and won the Sonje Award at Pusan International Film Festival 2015, tackles the problem of isolation...

Taking up two significant but also quite different issues, in this case the guerrilla war between the Malayan Communist Party (McP) troops and the British army and immigration (in this case of Philippino and Malaysians in Taiwan) is a rather ambitious task. Lau Kek Huat and Vera Chen gave it their best. Let us see how they fared.

Boluomi is Screening at Five Flavours Asian Film Festival

The narrative unfolds in two axes. In the first one, Wu Yi-fan is a Malaysian ethnic Chinese who is studying agriculture in Taiwan, after failing to get into any Malaysian university due to his descent. His life in Taiwan is quite difficult, since he does not get along with the local students, has to work long hours to make ends meet, and his only two friends are two other Malaysian-Chinese, one his age, and one of his professors. Eventually, he meets Laila, a...

Five Flavours Asian Film Festival invite you for a journey through taste, colors, and sounds of the Asian continent, hoping they can provide food for your thoughts and solace for your spirits.

The Programme of this year’s Festival comprises more than forty titles representing the extreme variety of Asian cinemas – from horror cinema to sweet melodramas, from grasping auteur cinema to relaxing journeys around the continent.

All the films will be presented online between November 25 and December 6.

Preparing this year’s edition forced the organisers to face up to completely new challenges – from the matters of logistics to finding new ways of thinking about their mission, priorities, building bridges between filmmakers and audiences outside the screening rooms. The online edition of the Festival is not a compromise, but a different way to reach the, perhaps even wider, audiences, discover the rich variety of Asian cultures, and explore the contemporary...

It’s finally time for the prestigious Taiwanese Award Ceremony “Golden Horse Awards” (23rd November 2019) and this is year the event is heavily influenced by the the snowballing effect of director Fu Yue’s cry for independence during her acceptance speech for the documentary “Our Youth In Taiwan” at last year’s edition. The statement caused a stir, ended with China boycotting the Golden Horse and Hong Kong directors being advised to stay away.

On the other hand, China’s Golden Rooster Awards has just opened and announced that from now on it will be held permanently in Xiamen and annually, instead of every two years. Therefore the two events will happened almost at the same time.

The “Golden Horse Awards” lineup is consequently “different” this year and – to stay positive – Taiwanese film-makers will have a greater chance to showcase their work and be awarded.

Leading the competition is the horror movie “Detention” with 12 nominations,...

There are films you feel glad to have seen for educational reasons, for being informed about aspects of our messed-up world that have so far escaped your attention. And at Busan, the leading film festival of Asia, it feels particularly fitting to learn more about the historical and current concerns of this vast, complicated continent through its film selection. But while you can certainly do that watching the debut narrative feature of Chinese-Malaysian filmmaker Lau Kek Huat and Taiwanese actress/director Vera Chen, the experience itself proves otherwise less than fulfilling.

Boluomi centers around young man Wu Yi-Fan (played by Wu Nien-Hsuan), nicknamed Boluomi after the tropical jackfruit popular in Southeast Asia. Yi-Fan was born in the Malay jungles amidst a decade-long guerilla warfare waged by the communist party. Like many other babies born of this fate, he was sent out of the jungle for safety and raised by a couple of local good Samaritans.

The nominations for this year’s Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan were unveiled Tuesday, with no Chinese films in contention amid the political fallout from last year’s ceremony.

Now in their 56th year, the awards have traditionally been seen as among the most prestigious for Chinese-language film. But tension bubbled over last year after Taiwanese filmmaker Fu Yue said onstage during an acceptance speech that she hoped Taiwan could be regarded as “independent.”

China classifies Taiwan as a renegade province rather than a separate country, and, according to various reports, authorities declared that China’s actors, directors and producers would not be allowed to submit to year’s Golden Horse Awards.

Instead, this year’s nominees list is largely composed of Taiwanese films, with a handful of features from Hong Kong and elsewhere also up for prizes. Taiwan’s Detention, John Hsu’s thriller, leads the pool with 12 noms including Best Narrative Feature,...

New Currents Award is presented to two first or second-time features from up-and-coming Asian filmmakers.

The 24th Busan International Film Festival has unveiled the 14 titles selected for the New Currents Award, the festival’s competition section for Asian films.

The line-up includes Rom directed by Vietnam’s Tran Thanh Huy; Boluomi from Taiwanese filmmakers Lau Kek Huat and Vera Chen; Iranian titles Among The Hills, from Mohammad Reza Keyvanfar, and Hamed Tehrani’s Diaspason, along with titles from Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, India, Japan, China and South Korea (full list below).

All are world premieres with the exception of Arden Rod Condez’ John Denver Trending,...