EXCLUSIVE: Singaporean filmmaker Tan Siyou has unveiled the trailer for her debut function Amoeba, which is able to world premiere on the upcoming Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition (TIFF).
Her debut function follows 16-year-old Choo, who befriends 3 rebellious classmates of their elite all-girls Chinese language faculty. Their urge to withstand authoritarian lecturers and college doctrines drives them to find the erased tales of legendary gangsters that dominated the streets of colonial Singapore. They quickly determine to type their very own gang.
Amoeba is produced by Fran Borgia from Akanga Movie Asia, who beforehand produced Yeo Siew Hua’s Venice competitors title Stranger Eyes (2024), in addition to Chie Hayakawa’s Cannes competitors title Renoir (2025).
Co-producers of Amoeba embrace Denis Vaslin, Antoine Simkine, Luisa Romeo and Sunhee Han.
Amoeba will premiere in TIFF’s Discovery part on September 9, with Bangkok-based gross sales agent Diversion securing the movie’s rights.
After finishing a directing fellowship on the American Movie Institute, Tan made brief movies Chilly Minimize, which premiered in Cannes’ Administrators’ Fortnight choice final 12 months, in addition to Strawberry Cheesecake, which premiered at Locarno, amongst others.
“This movie began from a want to analyze a narrative I informed myself as a teen — that I used to be an amoeba,” mentioned Tan. “I used to be closeted and felt withdrawn from a society that prized conformism above all. The amoeba’s simplicity represented my denial of all of the components of myself that I needed to bury, as a way to match into the construction round me. Amoeba is my manner of dealing with the loss that got here with the burial of my identification in teenhood.
“As a part of a technology that grew up in a younger nation that changed its historical past with a manufactured narrative, I wish to discover how we are able to create our personal tales to counter the narratives imposed upon us. Each as residents of a small nation, and as people in intimate good friend teams. Within the movie, the primary character makes use of a digital camera to proof a ghost that has been troubling her. Via that, she discovers treasures and histories buried with the aim of being forgotten,” added Tan.
