After a woman shoots a man to death, a damning letter she wrote raises suspicions.
A single dad looks to give up drinking and his bartender job in order to impress his son and find work as a magician.
In 1962 Hong Kong, two neighbors form a strong bond after both suspect extramarital activities of their spouses.
Wet Season revolves around the life of Ling, a schoolteacher who deals with infertility while having to take care of her infirm father-in-law at home. One of Ling's students, Kok Wei Lun, develops a crush on her during remedial Chinese classes. The two become closer as Wei Lun embraces Ling's extra tutoring.
Two playboys try to forget previous romances in Singapore – until they meet a beautiful dancer.
Mia, an ex-prostitute, is trapped in a loveless marriage with the abusive Quan (Sunny Pang, who also stars in Headshot in this year’s Festival lineup), a butcher who runs a roast meat shop. When she meets sensitive funeral director Wu, their passion for one another escalates into an affair. But the path to true love is fraught with jealousy, forcing someone to make a deadly move.
Three tales of love wrap around the true story of a blind and deaf woman named Theresa Chan. In the first an elderly shopkeeper is devoted to his sick wife. In the second, two teenage girls become soul mates and lovers. In the third a chubby security guard tries to find the courage to woo a beautiful woman who works in his building.
In Singapore, a private detective and the British authorities are on the trail of a crime syndicate that kidnaps a nuclear physicist with the aim of selling him to the highest bidder.
A fallen woman seeks redemption at a Singapore rubber plantation. Melodrama.
Two Singaporean girls join together to form the Papaya Sisters, a getai group that sings at performances during the seventh lunar month. Big Papaya is estranged from her mother, who disapproves of her performances, whilst Little Papaya is an orphan who suffers from terminal cancer. The two are assisted by Auntie Ling and her son, Guan Yin. The two soon rise to the top of the Singaporean getai scene singing traditional Hokkien songs, but their fame brings along with it the enmity of the Durian Sisters, a rival group of techno-singing Eurasian girls.
An American-born Chinese economics professor accompanies her boyfriend to Singapore for his best friend's wedding, only to get thrust into the lives of Asia's rich and famous.
50-year-old Jim (Gerald Chew, "Apprentice", Cannes Film Festival 2016 Un Certain Regard) loses his high-flying job in status-conscious Singapore, but his ego and pride compel him to hide this from his wife (Amy J Cheng, "Crazy Rich Asians") and daughter. His only confidante is his best friend (Sivakumar Palakrishnan, "A Yellow Bird", Cannes Film Festival 2016 Critics' Week). Desperately clinging onto the material symbols of his past success, he unlocks a hibernating malevolent force, with sinister roots in long-buried secrets. As his dream life crumbles around him, worlds collide, the lines between then and now become increasingly blurred, and Jim descends into a waking nightmare. REPOSSESSION is a bold, genre-bending film, with an ever-evolving, haunting soundscape from Golden Horse Award-winning composer Teo Wei Yong ("A Land Imagined").
A series of intertwining tales involve "pleasure seekers and pleasure providers" during the course of one night in Geylang, Singapore's red-light district. There are three distinct stories, united only by the presence of characters from all the stories in a streetside eatery:
Fast, frenetic, and furious best describe the story of five teenage boys all but abandoned by the system, estranged from any parents, and discarded by life in general. They build a world of there own in which gangs, drugs, fighting, body piercing, self-harm, and even suicide are considered commonplace. The film highlights their harrowing place in time and this small world; where brotherhood is valued above all else. Impressively acted by actual street kids, the movie highlights a gritty side of modern-day Singaporean life.
When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison. Among the American prisoners is Cpl. King, a wheeler-dealer who has managed to establish a pretty good life for himself in the camp. King soon forms a friendship with an upper-class British officer who is fascinated with King's enthusiastic approach to life.
An elderly widow finds an unexpected visitor, a young asylum-seeking girl, in her home during dinner. Inspired by a 2012 event, whereby 40 Burmese Rohingya asylum seekers arrived in the port of Singapore.
When his employee disappears in Singapore, Shyam travels from India to investigate the absence and becomes entangled in a deadly plot.
Jack Flowers is an American hustler trying to make his fortune in 1970s Singapore in small time pimping. His dreams of building a fortune by running a brothel himself and returning to the States is materialized when he is offered the opportunity by the CIA to run a brothel for the R&R activities of U.S. soldiers on leave in Singapore.
A group of English, American, Dutch and Australian women creates a vocal orchestra while being imprisoned in a Japanese POW camp on Sumatra during World War II.