Surveillance drama Stranger Eyes by Yeo Siew Hua is set to make history as the first ever film from Singapore to compete for the Golden Lion at Venice, just as the filmmaker’s A Land Imagined became the first from the country to win Locarno’s Golden Leopard in 2018.
The story, also written by Yeo, is about a young father who receives footage of his private life from a mysterious voyeur after his baby daughter goes missing and chooses to begin stalking the watcher himself. Through this act of flipping the gaze, Yeo is interested in investigating the ways of seeing and conversely, what it means to be seen as an image by another and to be constantly watched.
“We live in a time where what we see and what is real exist in great tension,” he says. “Yet we have also never lived a moment more intensely interconnected through technologies and more watched by the state, big corporations and each other. I don’t think we know enough about what living like this is shaping us into as a human race.”
The Singapore-set Chinese-language film underwent a long gestation period and nearly never saw the light of day. Yeo wrote the first draft in 2012 after making his 2009 directorial feature debut In the House Of Straw. But he and producer Fran Borgia decided to shelve the project after hitting a financial dead end.
It was brought back to life when A Land Imagined became the first film from Singapore to win Locarno’s top Golden Leopard prize in 2018. He rewrote the Stranger Eyes script to reflect his own personal changes and to make it more relevant to the times. “It shouldn’t come as a surprise that so much of the discourse surrounding surveillance has changed so rapidly,” he says. “It feels like we have shifted from asking for our rights to privacy to how we co-exist in this state of constant surveillance.”
He admits that it was not easy to revive a project after initial rejections. Things moved slowly amid a global slowdown brought about by the pandemic when there was little appetite to develop new projects or any promise that audiences would return to the theatres. There were times where it could have been shelved for a second time.
Back on set
Filming finally began in late 2023 as a Singapore-Taiwan-France-US collaboration. On board from the start of the process was Akanga Film Asia’s Singapore-based Spanish producer Borgia, whose credits include A Land Imagined and a string of acclaimed Southeast Asian films such as Cannes Critics’ Week top winner Tiger Stripes and Toronto Platform top winner Yuni.
The producer team also comprises Jean-Laurent Csinidis of France’s Films de Force Majeure, who supported A Land Imagined, as well as Stefano Centini of Volos Films from Taiwan and Alex Lo of US-based Cinema Inutile whom Borgia and Yeo met at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Film Project Promotion project market in 2021.
With Singapore Film Commission, Taiwan Creative Content Agency (TAICCA) and CNC - Aide aux Cinémas du Monde also among the backers, Stranger Eyes became a bigger production than his previous works, with a larger crew and cast that proposed new challenges and new possibilities. France’s Playtime handles international sales.
Support from TAICCA gave the team the means to hire a strong Taiwanese cast, including the two main leads Wu Chien-Ho (A Sun) and Golden Horse best actor Lee Kang-Sheng (Stray Dogs), and work with legendary Taiwanese sound designer Tu Duu-Chih.
The Taiwanese cast also includes newcomer Annica Panna and actress Vera Chen who is also an acting coach by profession and became a pillar for the younger actors over the course of the filming. Yeo says he had an enjoyable time co-directing her on 2023’s Deep End, a five-episode crime series backed by CJ ENM HK.
The team built a balanced financing model that gave Yeo the chance to work with French editor Jean-Christophe Bouzy (Titane), while maintaining his long-time collaborators on set such as cinematographer Hideo Urata and production designer James Page, both Singapore-based.
“We didn’t have to re-establish the way we work, and it felt like a familiar family reunion,” he recalls. “I could concentrate on my work with a varied ensemble cast from Taiwan and Malaysia [Peter Teo], who came with background and training different from the actors I used to work with in Singapore.”
Every film for Yeo is an opportunity to learn and grow. After the pandemic, “when we finally got back to production it was really beautiful,” he adds. “There was a hunger in everyone to return to set and put in their best work. There was a renewed purpose and passion as to why we dedicate our lives to cinema that was very moving for me to witness.”
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