A Land Imagined
︎︎︎Trailer ︎︎︎Streaming︎SYNOPSIS
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.
Lok
Peter Yu
Wang
Liu Xiaoyi
Mindy
Luna Kwok
Jason
Jack Tan
Ajit
Ishtiaque Zico
George
Kevin Ho
Foreman
Lee George Low
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
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
- 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.
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 2018IN COMPETITION
Hamburg Film Festival 2018IN COMPETITION
Göteborg Film Festival 2019IN COMPETITION
Rotterdam International Film Festival 2019IN COMPETITION
Hong Kong International Film Festival 2019IN COMPETITION
Vancouver International Film Festival 2018IN COMPETITION
FICUNAM Festival International de Cine UNAM 2019IN COMPETITION
Tokyo FILMEX International Film Festival 2018IN COMPETITION
Five Flavors Asian Film Festival 2018IN COMPETITION
Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival 2019IN COMPETITION
Festival du Nouveau Cinema 2018SALES AGENT
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