Singapore’s Cathay Organisation has announced the production of Our Sister Mambo to commemorate their 80th anniversary in 2015.

Inspired by Cathay classic films such as Our Sister Hedy and The Greatest Civil War On Earth, the romantic comedy will be directed by Ho Wi Ding.

A Malaysian film director currently based in Taipei, Ho won the Best New Director Award at Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival for light-hearted comedy Pinoy Sunday in 2008.

“It is a once-in-a-lifetime honour to direct Our Sister Mambo for Cathay’s 80th anniversary,” said Ho. “As a Malaysian who grew up in a small town with a handful of cinema theatres in the heydays, the cinemas nurtured most of my growing up memories – and Cathay was definitely one of them.”

Our Sister Mambo will be a modern-day Singaporean take on Our Sister Hedy, the 1957 film about a middle-class family with four unmarried daughters. The plot will revolve around the Wong household where the father acts as the glue that holds everyone together while Mambo, the protagonist, tries to get her three sisters hitched.

The film will be primarily in English with “a smattering of” Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay and Tamil.

Popular local playwright Michael Chiang (Beauty World, Mixed Signals) is writing the screenplay. Meileen Choo, executive director of Cathay Organisation is producing. Chiang and Choo previously worked together on the local hit Army Daze: The Movie (1996).

Cathay Organisation subsidiary Cathay Asia Films is producing in association with Oak3 Films and plans to have the film ready for the 80th anniversary in July 2015. It will be distributed by Cathay-Keris Films in Singapore.

 The film will star popular local actors Moses Lim (Just Follow Law) and Michelle Chong (Already Famous) as the main father and daughter pair.

Actress Siti Khalijah Zainal of TV and stage will be making her big screen debut in the film, as will Jazz vocalist Rani Singam.

Our Sister Mambo is meant to be a tribute to the Cathay film classics such as The Wild Wild Rose (1960), Mambo Girl (1957), Our Sister Hedy (1957), Satay (1958), The Greatest Civil War On Earth (1961), Sun, Moon and Star (1961), and the Pontianak series (1957-64).

Cathay plans to donate any profits from the film to charity.

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