Stranger Eyes

Source: Venice Film Festival

‘Stranger Eyes’

Yeo Siew Hua’s surveillance drama Stranger Eyes, which is competing for the Golden Lion at the ongoing Venice Film Festival, is set to open the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival (TGHFF) in November.

The Singapore-set Chinese-language film features a strong Taiwanese cast, including the two main leads Wu Chien-Ho (A Sun) and Golden Horse best actor Lee Kang-Sheng (Stray Dogs), actress Vera Chen and newcomer Annica Panna, as well as Taiwanese crew such as legendary sound designer Tu Duu-Chih.

This will mark the Asian premiere at TGHFF, which will take place from November 7-24.

The film took part in 2021 Golden Horse Film Project Promotion (FPP) where it received the FPP Visionary Award. It was also at the same project market that Yeo and his Singapore-based producer Fran Borgia of Akanga Film Asia met future co-producers Stefano Centini of Volos Films and Alex Lo of Cinema Inutile, making it a Singapore-Taiwan-France-US collaboration. Playtime handles international sales.

The story 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 investigates 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,” director-writer Yeo told Screen ahead of its world premiere in Venice. “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.”

Meanwhile, Yeo will present new series project The Fundamentals at this year’s FPP, which runs from November 18-20 during TGHFF. The crime drama follows an inspector and a forensic scientist who uncover a cult behind a series of decapitation murders. It is again produced by Akanga Film Asia and Volos Films.

Yeo’s previous film, 2018’s A Land Imagined was the first from Singapore to win Locarno’s Golden Leopard. It also won best original screenplay and best original film score at the Golden Horse Awards in 2019.

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