Great news for Singapore cinema!
Local director Yeo Siew Hua's sophomore feature film,
A Land Imagined, will compete at Locarno Film Festival this year.
Previously, Yeo directed the experimental anti-drama film
In The House of Straws, which premiered at Bangkok International Film Festival and the Singapore International Film Festival in 2009, as well as
The Obs: A Singapore Story, a documentary on local indie band The Observatory.
A Land Imagined is the first Singaporean film to be selected for the International Competition section of Locarno Film Festival, a festival known to champion upcoming auteur voices.
A Singapore-France-Netherlands coproduction, the film follows police investigator Lok who must find a missing migrant worker named Wang, who used to work at a land reclamation site. As Lok probes deeper and deeper, he uncovers the truth behind, or rather, beneath all that sand.
Veteran Mediacorp actor Peter Yu stars as Lok in his debut film role.
Migrant worker Wang will be played by stage actor Liu Xiaoyi, who is also an award-winning playwright and theatre director himself. Other members of the cast include award-winning Mainland Chinese actress Luna Kwok (
Kaili Blues) and Malaysian singer-actor Jack Tan (
Shuttle Life).
A Land Imagined is produced by Fran Borgia, who is also the producer responsible for Boo Junfeng’s
Apprentice and Rajagopal’s
A Yellow Bird.
In the same competition with
A Land Imagined is Mainland Chinese director Ying Liang’s
A Family Tour, which is co-produced by Singaporean producer Jeremy Chua, the co-producer and co-writer behind
A Yellow Bird.
A Land Imagined is expected to screen in Singapore late this year.