A LAND IMAGINED

“A Land Imagined” (Singapore, 2018) by Yeo Siew Hua begins with a disappearance. Wang Bi Cheng, a migrant worker from China, toils on a construction site where Singapore is pouring sand dredged from neighbouring coastlines into the sea to create new land. One day he is gone. The sleepless detective Lok takes on the case and follows the missing man’s trail to an internet café, where Wang spent his nights playing computer games and met an unknown fellow player. The deeper Lok digs, the less his investigation can be separated from the missing man’s life – and the less dream can be separated from inquiry.

Yeo Siew Hua tells this as a neo-noir of fog, neon light and construction-site noise, depicting a city that literally invents its own territory while rendering invisible the people who build it up. The film premiered in the Locarno competition in August 2018 and won the Golden Leopard there – the first film from Singapore to do so. It was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2018.

Shown at the 2018 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2018 · Film Archive