FORTISSIMIO FILMS
A ZHAO WEI FILMS PRODUCTION
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SYNOPSIS
En is an 18-year-old who has lost his father to cancer years ago. While waiting for his enlistment into the army, he has to put up at his grandparents’ place as his mother goes on a holiday with a new man in her life.
As En soon finds out at his grandparents’ place, life cannot be put on hold indefinitely. He gets more and more involved with his grandparents’ lives – the routines his grandfather builds around his grandmother’s dementia and which his grandfather fears are no longer sufficient to support her worsening condition. At his grandparents’ place, En also discovers that there may be more to his father’s student activist past than his mother lets on and is determined to get to the bottom of the matter.
As his family is drawn together in a sudden tragedy, En has to decide where his loyalty lies and stand up for what he believes in. But in a country where ideologies are forged on constantly shifting sands, he finds himself struggling to stay true to what he knows to be right. And in a family that prefers to forget, the sandcastles of everything he holds dear seem doomed to be washed away by the tides of time.
National identity in Singapore has been forged through years of propaganda. Singaporeans are constantly reminded that our city-state has transformed itself from a Third World country to First World in one generation, and that freedom of expression and speech should be sacrificed for social stability and peace. One of the prime sites for nationalistic indoctrination is National Service, where male Singaporeans are conscripted into the military for two years. And yet among members of my generation, the experience has often bred cynicism and even apathy. The idea of defending the ideals of the nation has become abstract and remote.
I found myself asking a few questions while conducting research for the film. What did it mean for an earlier generation of activists to fight for this notion of a homeland, often at great personal risk? Whatever happened to their naïve ambitions and noble dreams? It seems to me that there has been some rupture or disconnect between my generation and the one that preceded us, where romantic idealism has been replaced by calculative pragmatism.
At various times in the film, the character of En experiences a nagging emptiness, disorientation and even loss. But he embarks on a redemptive journey to understand his family’s background and by extension, his nation’s history. I believe this is a journey that many Singaporeans are beginning to make, in a country that is staring so hard at its future that it has become blind to its past. -- Boo Junfeng, writer/director Boo Junfeng is one of Singapore’s most prolific young filmmakers. Since 2005 his short films have won several awards at the Singapore International Film Festival, including Best Director, Best Cinematography, Special Jury Prize, Special Achievement Award and twice for Best Film. He was also the first recipient of the McNally Award for Excellence in the Arts – the valedictorian honour of Lasalle College of the Arts - and the latest recipient of the Young Artist Award from the National Arts Council of Singapore.
Trained in film schools in Singapore and Spain, his works often centre on themes of alienation, kinship, love and sexuality. His short films, as well as his segment in the omnibus feature film, LUCKY 7, have won him acclaim at numerous film festivals, including Berlin International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam and Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. |
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