SINGAPORE – Veteran local actor Peter Yu is having a good year.
“It’s crazy. Five films in one year,” says the 55-year-old as he shakes his head.
Three films in which he has credits have made their mark at international festivals and awards ceremonies in 2023.
Home-grown film-maker Nelson Yeo’s debut feature Dreaming & Dying won two prizes at the Locarno Film Festival – the Golden Leopard for Concorso Cineasti del presente awarded to first- or second-time feature films, and the Swatch First Feature Award for Best First Feature.
Last Shadow At First Light – a drama about a woman who travels from Singapore to Japan in search of her missing mother and in which Yu plays the woman’s father – earned Singaporean director Nicole Midori Woodford a nomination in the New Directors Award category at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
Malaysian director Chong Keat Aun’s historical drama Snow In Midsummer sees Yu as the patriarch of a family caught in the 1960s Malaysia race riots. It earned nine nominations at the Golden Horse Awards, which will be held in Taipei in November.
These three films will make their premiere here at the 34th edition of the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF), alongside two more titles featuring Yu.
Wonderland, a drama directed by Singaporean film-maker Chai Yee Wei, is set in the 1980s. Co-starring Mark Lee, it deals with two fathers bonding over their love for their daughters.
A Year Of No Significance from Singaporean film-maker Kelvin Tong will feature Yu in a drama set in the 1970s about a Chinese-educated architect facing pressures caused by the widening adoption of English.
Yu’s burst of productivity in 2023 also has to do with the Covid-19 pandemic, he says. Covid-19 restrictions had caused releases to be held back until film festivals returned to normal, and it was also easier to shoot in 2022 with the relaxing of group gathering rules.
He was speaking to The Straits Times on Wednesday at The Riverhouse Singapore on the sidelines of a press event for SGIFF, which runs from Nov 30 to Dec 10.
“A Year Of No Significance took 3½ years to complete,” he says. Others, such as Dreaming & Dying, were quicker to finish.
He has not watched any of the five films he is in, but is eager to catch Dreaming & Dying because he is curious about the sort of film that could emerge from just five days of filming, he says.
Shot around Singapore, it features Yu, veteran theatre practitioner Doreen Toh and actor Kelvin Ho in a story about three friends who reunite after years apart, only for something in their past to resurface. It has been described as a film that deals with ageing and memory, expressed in a tone that includes magical realism.
“When I read the script, I didn’t understand the story. It didn’t make sense to me, so all glory to director Yeo,” says Yu, who shot to fame as a finalist in the 1990 Star Search competition and went on to star in Channel 8 series such as Tofu Street (1996) and The Silver Lining (1997).
He is also keen to watch A Year Of No Significance because he was asked to deliver a performance he described as intense.
“It’s about a Chinese-educated man with career problems because he can’t speak English. He has disagreements with his father. He’s a man torn apart emotionally. It’s enough to drive him insane,” he says.
In each of the five films, Yu was invited to join the cast without an audition. When asked why film-makers seek him out, he smiles and says that the question is best aimed at the directors.
“I’m just grateful that they chose me,” he says.
Yu is sought after because of his screen presence, says Dreaming & Dying’s writer-director Yeo, 39.
“A lot of times, he doesn’t have to say anything. His presence does the communication. He has energy and charisma,” Yeo says in a separate interview at the same event.
Yeo’s debut feature expands on ideas first expressed in Dreaming, a short film he was commissioned by the SGIFF to make for its 2021 edition.
Making that made him realise that he enjoyed what he calls the “language” of the film, which he explained had come about because of factors he could not control, such as the budget and the weather.
By adapting his storytelling, he found it was possible to shoot a low-budget feature in Singapore, he says. In the industry, there is a belief that Singapore is too urban, crowded and expensive for location filming.
Flexibility is key, says Yeo. If it rained, the downpour would be worked into the scene instead of pausing the shoot.
“The film is scripted, but I’m willing to let go of certain things. Go with the flow, like a river. It’s a good metaphor because water is a symbol in the film,” he says.
Other highlights of 2023’s SGIFF programme include Tomorrow Is A Long Time, a drama about a fraught father-son relationship by Singaporean film-maker Jow Zhi Wei. It was screened at the Berlin Film Festival as part of the Generation 14plus selection and was a nominee for a Crystal Bear prize.
Anthony Chen’s first English-language feature Drift, a refugee drama starring English actress Cynthia Erivo, is also part of the line-up.
And so is Inside The Yellow Cocoon Shell, a Vietnam-Singapore-France-Spain co-production that won the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It deals with the journey of discovery a man makes while accompanying the body of his deceased sister-in-law across the country.
Another highlight is Poor Things, a black comedy from celebrated Greek film-maker Yorgos Lanthimos starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and is likely to earn several nominations at the 2024 Oscars.
SGIFF will bring back two honours – the Cinema Icon Award, last given out in 2019, and the International Federation of Film Critics Award, last given out in 2006.
The Cinema Icon Award in 2023 will go to Chinese actress Fan Bingbing, the award-winning star of the comedy film I Am Not Madame Bovary (2016) and superhero blockbuster X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014).
The 42-year-old will grace the opening night of SGIFF. Under the Icon In Focus section, three of her films – Green Night (2023), Double Xposure (2012) and Buddha Mountain (2011) – will be screened.
Book it/Singapore International Film Festival
Where: Various venues, including Filmgarde Kallang, Golden Village x The Projector at Cineleisure and Gallery Theatre at the National Museum of Singapore
When: Nov 30 to Dec 10
Admission: Free and ticketed (from $10)
Info: Ticket sales for SGIFFriends start on Thursday at noon, and for the public on Friday at noon. For more information, go to sgiff.com
