SGIFF 22: 10 Must-See Films
Celebrate the best cinema in Singapore with our recommendations at the 33rd edition of the festival.
By Kirsten Tan, Southeast Asia Ambassador for FREE THE WORK
From thoughtful documentaries to genre-bending thrillers, the 33rd edition of the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) has plenty to offer film fans. Our Southeast Asia Ambassador, Kirsten Tan is on the ground at SGIFF and will be covering the festival this year. The Singapore International Film Festival is the largest and longest-running film event in Singapore.
Here are 10 recommendations featuring voices from the FREE THE WORK community and beyond.
“Archaeology of Love” — Directed by Lee Wan Min
Synopsis: A powerfully restrained performance stands out in this study of a woman processing the complex emotions of grief in the aftermath of abuse.
Archaeologists Youngsil and Inseek go from strangers to lovers eight hours after they meet. Won over by hyperbolic declarations of love, Youngsil finds herself bound to Inseek even after their eventual breakup. As she attempts to recover the ground beneath her feet in her personal and professional life, the appearance of Udo spurs Youngsil’s tentative reach for a new love but also dredges up past traumas.
“Baby Queen” — Directed by Lei Yuan Bin
Synopsis: The life of emerging drag queen Opera Tang offers a moving portrait of being queer in Singapore.
With her striking Teochew opera-inspired makeup, Opera Tang has been making waves on the local drag scene since her debut in 2020. Through intimate vignettes of Opera’s personal life, the film chronicles her queer journey: from coming out as a fledgling drag queen, falling in love, competing in drag pageants, to dressing up her supportive and charming 90-year-old grandma in drag.
“Dry Ground Burning” — Directed by Joana Pimenta
Synopsis: A radical sisterhood of oil pirates fights for economic independence and community in this hybrid stunner set in a Brazilian favela.
Liquid gold sleeps beneath the ground Chitara stands on, and so she hijacks the oil pipelines, roping her sisters into her rebel gasoline ring. Léa, recently released from a women’s prison, relates these tales of solidarity and precarity: from selling petrol cheaply to motor gangs, to her post-incarceration surveillance.
“Gaga” — Directed by Laha Mebow
Synopsis: A warm indigenous family drama that gently crests and falls, like the seasons of their misty, mountainous homelands.
The Hayung family inhabits the highlands of Taiwan along with other indigenous Atayal people. Held in high esteem by the community, they make a steady living from agriculture and tourism, while the men sometimes have too much to drink. Even when their days are met by ruptures like an elder’s death or land surveys, their faiths — a syncretic mix of their Gaga belief system and Christianity — appear to prevail.
“Geographies of Solitude” — Directed by Jacqueline Mills
Synopsis: A timeless portrait of Sable Island through a poetic immersion into its ecosystem.
On the remote Sable Island off Nova Scotia, naturalist and environmentalist Zoe Lucas has spent a lifetime meticulously documenting the island’s changes. Lucas is the devoted custodian of her chosen home where she has lived for over 40 years, amassing a staggering collection of taxidermy creatures and catalogs of marine litter.
“Leonor Will Never Die” — Directed by Martika Ramirez Escobar
Synopsis: A retired screenwriter becomes the heroine of her own unfinished script as reality and fiction collide in this genre-bending Filipino melodrama.
Former famed screenwriter Leonor leads a sorry retirement stuck with insufferable son Rudie and seeking solace in the ghost of her favorite son Ronwaldo. But all is not lost. When hit by a television set, Leonor enters the world of her unfinished script. She ecstatically lives the action drama she knows too well, its story a comedic catharsis of her repressed emotions. But as the movie speeds into the uncharted terrains of the script, Leonor must write the ending — by being the heroine it needs.
“Myanmar Diaries” — Directed by the Myanmar Film Collective (several directors)
Synopsis: Following Myanmar’s military coup in 2021, locals resist and negotiate life in a regime of terror.
Following the Burmese military junta’s coup in February 2021, civilians are plunged into a reality where state-sponsored violence is rife. Comprising footage recorded by locals telling of their lived experiences, this hybrid documentary is an account of the emotions post-coup for the ordinary Burmese: alienation, frustration, despair, shattered hopes, and betrayal.
“Nezouh” — Directed by Soudade Kaadan
Synopsis: An impactful and heart-wrenching film about the experiences of a family in war-torn Syria.
Nezouh translates as ‘the displacement of water, soul, and people’ — a perfect description of the family in war-torn Syria depicted in the film. Damascus-based parents Mutaz and Hala, and their daughter Zeina, are facing the dilemma of either staying in their homeland where they risk death or fleeing the war and in turn uprooting their lives completely.
“Summer with Hope” — Directed by Sadaf Foroughi
Synopsis: A mishap days before a swim meet threatens to quash a mother and son’s hope for liberty in this Kafkaesque modern tragedy.
Unruly teenager Omid has to win a swimming competition — not just for himself but also for his mother Leili, whose freedom from his estranged father is contingent on Omid’s performance. When plans go awry, what is thought to be a beacon of hope soon turns into a snare that Omid must find ways to elude. As the struggle to stay the course is met with indifference and judgment from the community, the family begins to disintegrate.
“Under the Fig Trees” — Directed by Erige Sehiri
Synopsis: In a remote fig orchard during the Tunisian summer, workers, many of them teenagers, undertake the laborious, meticulous task of fig-picking. As a respite from the tedium of work, the women flirt with the men while trading secrets and stories among themselves. Under the trees and away from their employer’s surveillance, the women navigate generational conflict and forge honest connections.
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