Italian Premiere | In Competition | Best Screenplay Candidate
Singapore, 2026, 157’, Mandarin, English
Directed by: Anthony Chen
Screenplay: Anthony Chen
Cinematography (colour): Teoh Gay Hian
Editing: Hoping Chen
Production Design: Huang Mei-Ching
Music: Kinn Leonn, Thomas Foguenne
Producer: Anthony Chen
Cast: Yeo Yann Yann (Bee Hwa), Koh Jia Ler (Junyang), Andi Lim (Boon Kiat), Regene Lim (Lydia)
Date of First Release in Territory: TBA
Anthony Chen’s debut feature film,
Ilo Ilo, released in 2013,
remains a watershed film for Singapore cinema for a number of reasons. The arrival of a finely calibrated coming-of-age, family drama that treaded on a very specific cinematic realism is one that continues to exert influence on newer local filmmakers plying their trade films today.
While juggling a burgeoning career in film producing, it took Chen six years to follow up his initial success with
Wet Season, a drama about the relationship between a teacher and a student. It starred
Ilo Ilo’s holdover actors Yeo Yann Yann and, a now teenager, Koh Jia Ler, in the titular relationship. The possibility of a trilogy took shaped and was fulfilled this year with
We Are All Strangers, completing the informally named “Growing Up” trilogy.
Koh Jia Ler, now entering young adulthood in real life, plays Junyang, fresh out of tertiary education and living with his soft spoken and withdrawn father, Boon Kiat, played by veteran television actor, Andi Lim. Boon Kiat plies his trade as a Hokkien prawn noodle hawker in a coffeeshop barely making ends meet. Not quite in poverty but in the context of the contemporary Singaporean economics, it lands them squarely in the lower income stratum of society. In the same coffeeshop, Bee Hwa, played by Yeo Yann Yann, works as a “beer auntie,” a colloquial term for a beer promoter whose task it is to encourage beer sales often times by way of boisterous drinking sessions with the customers. Opposites attract and in due course, Boon Kiat is drawn out of his shell by the outgoing Bee Hwa. A meet-cute at a BTS concert brings together Junyang and Lydia, played by Regene Lim, and soon they find themselves in the throes of young love. Lydia comes from a well-to-do single mother family who disapproves of the relationship. She is an aspiring concert pianist and in typical Singaporean fashion, her mother has outlined a clear future for her daughter. One that does not involve Junyang. Despite such objections, their love for each other prevails and their union is sealed when Lydia is found pregnant out of wedlock.
The intertwining lives of this quartet of characters form the narrative trajectory of the film. Lives marked by joy, tragedies, moral conundrums, and a pinch of good old-fashioned melodrama. The film really comes into being when these four (or five, if we count the baby on the way) formed an unlikely family unit. Taking a page out of Edward Yang’s
Yi Yi, Chen weaved four distinct chronicles of intergenerational lives that give rise to a larger national narrative revealing several sociological and existential issues at the heart of contemporary Singapore. In similar fashion, the film speaks of more eternal matters as characters’ decisions affect other characters beyond their control. The coming-of-age of both Junyang and Lydia and the acceptance of life lived on the part of Boon Kiat and Bee Hwa hinge on decisive reactions against their circumstances.
The film truly shines in several intersection points between the protagonists, such as the growing sense of kinship between Junyang and Bee Hwa after they were beset with personal tragedies, or when Lydia finally had time to take stock of her life choices to forego University and keep the baby. It is during these points that the film’s relentless drama slows down to take stock of the characters’ inner emotions. This requires the actors to deliver beyond mere acting. They rose to the occasion, particularly Yeo Yann Yann in the role of Bee Hwa.
Perhaps the title,
We Are All Strangers, itself is rhetorical in nature. And your answer may hold the crux to the expansive meaning of the film.
Anthony Chen
Born in 1984, Anthony Chen is an award-winning writer, director and producer. In 2007, he became the first Singaporean filmmaker to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival for his short film Ah Ma. In 2013, his debut feature, Ilo Ilo, was awarded the prestigious Caméra d’Or at Cannes and four Golden Horse Awards. Chen’s recent work demonstrates a dynamic international reach. The Breaking Ice (2023), his first Chinese-language film produced in China, premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes. His latest film, We Are All Strangers, completes his Singapore “Growing Up” trilogy (alongside Ilo Ilo and Wet Season).
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
2013 – Ilo Ilo
2019 – Wet Season
2023 – Drift
2023 – The Breaking Ice
2026 – We Are All Strangers