Unlucky Plaza
After a two-year hiatus, the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) is back and will open December 4th with Ken Kwek’s Unlucky Plaza, a first for a Singaporean film. Unlucky Plaza is a story about one man’s financial woes that spiral into a harrowing crisis. When he is further outdone by a financial scam, he takes a group of people hostage in a millionaire’s bungalow and the crisis, captured on video, sparks an international outcry. A multi-character thriller from one of Asia’s most exciting young filmmakers, Unlucky Plaza navigates among three narrative threads in order to create a dramatic statement about the things we do for money.
It stars Filipino actor Epy Quizon in the lead role. The other parts are taken by local veteran stage and screen actors Adrian Pang, Judee Tan, Shane Mardjuki, Janice Koh, Pamela Oei, who is Kwek’s wife, and television host and actor Guo Liang. The film’s title is a play on Lucky Plaza, the Orchard Road mall known for its businesses serving Filipino residents.Ken Kwek was born in Singapore and attended Cambridge University. He has written and directed the shorts anthology Sex.Violence.FamilyValues. Unlucky Plaza is his first feature, which debuted in the Discovery section at the recent Toronto International Film Festival.
The festival which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, will screen over 100 feature and short films, of all genres. Audiences can look forward to Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s (Turkey) Winter Sleep (2014), a story set in Anatolia that examines the significant divide between the rich and poor, as well as the powerful and powerless in Turkey. At the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, the film won the Palme d’Or and the FIPRESCI Prize. The film has also been selected as the Turkish entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards.
Also in the line-up are Red Amnesia (2014) by acclaimed Chinese filmmaker Wang Xiaoshuai (China) (Beijing Bicycle, In Love We Trust), and From What Is Before (2014) by SGIFF regular Lav Diaz (Philippines).
Red Amnesia is a disturbing thriller about a retired widow, who has her daily routine disrupted when she starts receiving mysterious, anonymous phone calls. It is set in the ever-changing world of contemporary China, and brings powerful political urgency to the telling of its suspenseful tale. A renowned auteur, Wang is regarded as one of China’s “Sixth Generation” filmmakers, along with names like Zhang Yuan and Jia Zhangke.
Meanwhile, From What Is Before follows a remote town in the Philippines under Marcos’ dictatorship in the 1970s. The film had its world premiere in the Philippines in July this year, and won the Golden Leopard at the 2014 Locarno International Film Festival. It recently had its North American premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, under the Wavelengths section.
36-year-old Ahmad Abdalla El Sayed Abdelkader, an Egyptian film director, editor and screenwriter, has been confirmed as this year’s Filmmaker in Focus.
SGIFF will feature his latest film Décor (2014), a psychological drama set in Cairo about a woman struggling to know what she wants, and have her own choices in life. The main character is obsessed with old Egyptian films, which she keeps playing on VHS. In keeping with the classic theme, the entire film is played out in black and white, the first Egyptian film to use this format since Mohamed Fadel’s 1996 drama Nasser 56, about the late Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.