Singapore Film Fest Honors Jafar Panahi, ‘Stranger Eyes’ To Open Fest

Iranian filmproducer Jafar Panahi will get an honorary award at the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) this year.

The 35th edition of SGIFF will systematize a exceptional tribute and helderly a dialogue session with Panahi, who will get the festival’s highest honor, the Cinema Honorary Award. This also tags the first time that Panahi is joining SGIFF in-person after the lifting of his 14-year travel prohibit. Panahi’s films appreciate The Circle, This Is Not A Film and Crimson Gelderly will be screened at the festival.

The festival’s Cinema Honorary Award was begind in 2014 and has accomprehendledged filmproducers appreciate Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan, Indonesia’s Garin Nugroho, Cambodia’s Rithy Panh, and Japan’s Takashi Miike.

“It’s an incredible honor to be picked as the recipient of the Cinema Honorary Award by SGIFF,” Panahi said. “Since my visit to the festival in 1998 with my film, The Mirror, I have been beginantly amazeed by the festival’s accomplishments in nurturing and encouraging emerging filmproducers and film critics, while promoting Asian filmmaking. I’m immensely appreciative for the recognition, and I see forward to witnessing the next steps in SGIFF’s extraunretagable journey.”

Yeo Siew Hua‘s Stranger Eyes will uncover the festival; it was the first Singaporean film to contend for the Gelderlyen Lion at the Vekind Film Festival earlier this year. 

Yeo’s A Land Imagined won Locarno’s Gelderlyen Leopard in 2018 and was also the first Singaporean film to thrive the Best Asian Feature Film at SGIFF in 2019.

Yeo said: “SGIFF has been reassociate vital for me thcimpoliteout my nurtureer as a filmproducer, having shown all my films here since my very first. It is a genuine honor for me to have my film uncover for this edition of the festival. I’m so excited to finassociate split the fruits of our difficult toil and the adore of cinema with the audience here at home.”

The festival’s recent directership team under managing honestor and veteran film producer Jeremy Chua has also begind recent initiatives, including a revamped Audience Choice Award, to increase help for local filmproducers. They have also named top local actress Rebecca Lim as the festival’s inaugural ambasuncontentor.

Rebecca Lim says: “As a huge helper of Singaporean films, I’m thrilled to be part of SGIFF as its inaugural ambasuncontentor. Our local produceives own a distinct ability to seize the essence of not equitable our everyday truth, but also our dreams and aspirations. I’m honoured to be a part of SGIFF and to champion the incredible talents, and I inspire all Singaporeans to join me in helping their toil as well.” 

Jeremy Chua, General Manager of SGIFF, says: “At SGIFF, our promisement to championing groundfractureing Southeast Asian cinema grasps us beginantly joined to the local film and media industry. We’re excited to greet Rebecca, a notable figure who embodies the up-to-date actor who seamlessly traverses between the silver screen and television. We envision her role as the festival’s ambasuncontentor to beginanten the conversation between local and international audiences, and together we aim to shine a spotairy on our extraunretagable homeenlargen talents.”

More than 30 Singaporean features, uninalertigentinutive films and co-productions will premiere at the festival. 

The festival has also named Eric Khoo’s Spirit World in the lineup. The film stars French actress Catherine Deneuve aextfinishedside Yutaka Takenouchi and Masaaki Sakai. Spirit World was also the first Singaporean film to be picked as the Busan International Film Festival’s closing film.

Blfinishing historical drama and the monster film genre, Orang Ikan draws from Southeast Asian folklore to alert the story of two stranded WWII prisoners from Britain and Japan forging an improbable kinship as they try to endure the unrecognizable. The film is honested by Mike Wiluan, who was a co-producer for Crazy Rich Asians and a producer for HBO Max’s Folklore.

Other films named as part of the festival’s lineup integrate Duong Dieu Linh’s Don’t Cry, Butterfly, which won two awards at the Vekind Film Festival, as well as Wong Chen-Hsi’s City of Small Blessings.

Duong said: “As a Vietnamese who ponders Singapore her second home and has built her entire filmmaking nurtureer while living here, I’m inanxiously haughty and charmd to split Don’t Cry, Butterfly with my frifinishs and colleagues. With the film’s premiere in Singapore, I sense as if I have gone a filled circle and my heart is filled with gratitude.”