A Land Imagined

︎︎︎Trailer ︎︎︎Streaming

︎SYNOPSIS
Set in industrial Singapore, police investigator Lok must find missing migrant worker Wang. Wang suffers a worksite accident and is anxious about repatriation. Unable to sleep, Wang starts frequenting a dreamy cybercafé in the dead of the night. Hoping to look for some form of human connection in this foreign land he feels alienated from, Wang forms a virtual friendship with a mysterious gamer that takes a sinister turn. When Wang suddenly disappears, Lok digs deep into the trail leading to a land reclamation site, in order to uncover the truth beneath all that sand.

︎CAST

Lok

Peter Yu

Wang

Liu Xiaoyi

Mindy

Luna Kwok

Jason

Jack Tan

Ajit

Ishtiaque Zico

George

Kevin Ho

Foreman

Lee George Low


︎CREW

Written and Directed by

Yeo Siew Hua

Produced by

Fran Borgia

Co-producers

Gary Goh,
Jean-Laurent Csinidis, Denis Vaslin

Executive Producers

Melvin Ang,
Ng Say Yong

Associate Producers

Dan Koh

Director of Photography

Hideho Urata

Production Designer

James Page

Costume Designer

Meredith Lee

Editor 

Daniel Hui

Sound Recordist

Alex Herboche

Sound Designer

Damien Guillaume

Sound Mixer

Gilles Benardeau

Music Composers

Teo Wei Yong


︎TECHNICAL INFORMATION

Original title

幻土

International Title

A Land Imagined

Duration

95 min / Colour

Aspect Ratio

2.39:1

Screening Format

2K DCP

Sound

5.1 Surround Sound, Stereo

Year of Release

2018

Language

Mandarin

Subtitles

English

Country of production

Singapore, France,
The Netherlands

Production Companies

Akanga Film Asia, mm2 Entertainment, Films de Force Majeure, Volya Film

In Association with

13 Little Pictures

Supported by

Singapore Film Commission, Aide aux Cinemas du Monde, Hubert Bals Fund of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Netherlands Film Fund, Torino Film Lab Audience Design Award


PRESS
“A Marvel: a police procedural which morphs into a complex web of delusions and dreams … finessing a political critique of the island state even as it moves into a Borgesian labyrinth of dreams.”
- Sight & Sound

“A dreamy neo-noir that unfolds like a Singaporean ‘Chinatown’ … the movie does for sand what ‘Chinatown’ did for water.”
- Indiewire

“Writer/director YEO Siew Hua and cinematographer Hideho URATA swiftly establish a film noir-style ambience as detective Lok (Peter YU) drives through a neon-lit Singapore like a latter-day Philip Marlowe or J J Gittes. City lights twinkle through the haze of tumbling rain and vast industrial landscapes are silhouetted against blood red skies. The score is jazzy, the mood is fatalistic and there is the sense that the case of one individual will reveal bittersweet truths about the state of the nation.”
– Screen

“The mutability of territory is embedded in the very title of Yeo Siew Hua’s A Land Imagined, winner of the festival’s top prize, the Golden Leopard, which was awarded by an international competition jury led by Jia Zhangke. The film takes on the issues of land reclamation and migrant labor in Singapore via an oneiric blend of detective genre convolutions and male melodrama intimacies. Cinematographer Hideho Urata lends the film’s night scenes the lurid neon-noir aesthetics of Miami Vice, and editor (and great filmmaker in his own right) Daniel Hui delicately maintains the film’s balance between its serpentine plotline and understated political commentary.”
– Artforum


DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
Singapore has garnered itself a reputation as a modern economic miracle, turning itself from a fishing village to a thriving modern economy over the short period of only a few decades.

Such a feat is possible due to its ability to systematically engineer a land designed through land reclamation and endless construction projects. By perpetually reshaping itself, it negates natural geographical formations, rendering them into perfectly straight and angular shorelines – a land as though imagined up by some geometrical mind.

Even the people on this imaginary land are at the same time equally imagined. As a country of immigrants, its demography is wholly dependent on migration policies and economic considerations. New migrants are brought into the fold to reinvigorate the imagination of this economic miracle – a success story that is built upon the backs of low wage migrant labourers from the region who are hired to build a nation they can never become a part of.


FESTIVALS
Golden Leopard Award, Junior Jury Award and Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, Locarno International Film Festival 2018
Achievement in Cinematography and Young Cinema Award, Asia Pacific Screen Award 2018

Golden Star Award for Best International Fiction Feature, El Gouna Film Festival 2018

Best Asian Feature Film, Singapore International Film Festival 2018
Outstanding Cinematography Award, Seminci Valladolid International Film Festival 2018
Special Jury Award, London East Asia Film Festival 2018
Best Original Screenplay and Best Original Film Score, Golden Horse Award 2019
Special Jury Award, London East Asia Film Festival 2018
Golden Gautama Award for Best Film, Nepal International Film Festival 2019
Youth Jury Special Mention, International Film Festival of Rotterdam 2019

IN COMPETITION

Nantes Three Continents Festival 2018

IN COMPETITION

Hamburg Film Festival 2018

IN COMPETITION

Göteborg Film Festival 2019

IN COMPETITION

Rotterdam International Film Festival 2019

IN COMPETITION

Hong Kong International Film Festival 2019

IN COMPETITION

Vancouver International Film Festival 2018

IN COMPETITION

FICUNAM Festival International de Cine UNAM 2019

IN COMPETITION

Tokyo FILMEX International Film Festival 2018

IN COMPETITION

Five Flavors Asian Film Festival 2018

IN COMPETITION

Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival 2019

IN COMPETITION

Festival du Nouveau Cinema 2018


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