SeaShorts Competition Official Selection 2022

20 short films from Southeast Asia compete for the SeaShorts Award. These short films were selected based on their individual approaches in filmmaking and unique portrayal of the themes and stories in the region. This year we see a diverse selection of works, that range from delicate displays of affection and remembrance to more innovative and daring explorations in ideas and speculations; the filmmaker’s hand is observed as curious and idiosyncratic in their hunger for play and introspection.

The most exciting thing about Southeast Asian filmmaking? The fact that this relatively small region hosts a treasure trove of self-sustaining, dynamic artists and filmmakers who weather oft-unfavourable conditions to pursue storytelling through cinema. They somehow manage to emerge on the world stage, creating wonder in spite of financial and technological limitations in search of an identity, to express their cultural and social truths.

Competition Programme 1

A Lost Astronaut And A City Of Footprint (Phi hành gia thất lạc và thị trấn của những dấu chân)
Dir. Vu Nguyen Nam Khue | Vietnam | 2022 | 15′

An executive trapped in his own nightmares. In those dreams, he becomes a woman, the wife of a colleague. In those dreams, the belongings of the deceased astronaut are handed over to the wife. The woman and her bureaucracy, the executive and his recurring nightmares. How can one escapes?

It’s Raining Frogs Outside (Ampangabagat Nin Talakba Ha Likol)
Dir. Maria Estela Paiso | Philippines | 2021 | 14′

The world is about to end. Maya is forced to go home to the province of Zambales. There, she confronts her childhood house that terrorizes her as frogs rain outside.

Sound of the Night (Somleng reatrey)
Dir. Chanrado Sok & Kongkea Vann | Cambodia | 2021 | 20′

Vibol and his brother Kea sell noodles on a motorized cart every night on the streets of Phnom Penh. They often face troublesome threats from gangsters and thieves, even if these very people are their only customers. As the city is growing around them, they consider their unstable income and imagine a different future.

Saudade
Dir. Russell Morton | Singapore | 2020 | 20′

Saudade is an aural and visual archive narrated entirely in Kristang—a creole language that emerged in 16th century Portuguese colonial Malacca. The film reimagines rituals and choreography characteristic of early Eurasian kampongs in three acts: a song and dance of the Jinkli Nona, a scene between a shrimp fisherman and his wife, and a cross-cultural encounter with the orang minyak. Using folklore and myth as narrative anchors, Morton weaves his personal identity and allegorical storytelling into cinema to examine the origins of Eurasians. The intermingled Asian and European ancestry of the domiciled community is captured through the seemingly disparate appearance of a supernatural Malay legend alongside characters donning costumes that draw upon the conventions of Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch dress. Set against the exultant energies of the Eurasian imagination, the film tells a story of loss and displacement of a people and its language.

Competition Programme 2

A Spider, Fever, and Other Disappearing Islands
Dir. Natalie Khoo | Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia | 2021 | 21′

A Spider, Fever and Other Disappearing Islands is an experimental documentary which connects my grandmother’s migration from the Indonesian Riau Islands to Singapore with a spider spirit’s migratory route, where memories of colonial ghosts, sisterhood, and disappearance are woven together. Emerging through this melange of media forms is a re-imagined archipelagic and family history that reclaims the act of story-telling as simultaneously generative and fluid.

Sweet Squad (Pasukan Semut)
Dir. Haris Supiandi | Indonesia | 2021 | 24′

This is a story about a teenager who has to take the risk of being a sugar courier at the border between Indonesia and Malaysia to pay for his mother’s treatment. The border area is located in Kalimantan Barat, Rizal takes the risk of transporting unauthorised sugar from Malaysia to Indonesia, through back alleys for several days for a large amount of fee, to pay for his mother’s treatment at a hospital in Malaysia. He is accompanied by Iwan and Ajung, they ultimately have to take risks to deliver sugar in pursuit of money.

A Worm, Whatever Will Be, Will Be (Zhu Zai Ta Shen Ti Li De Chong)
Dir. Mickey Lai Loke Yee | Malaysia | 2022 | 12′

Not knowing it’s the final three months for her dementia-ridden grandmother, a filmmaker records their daily interactions. Her intent gaze documents the grandmother’s physical changes and her belief that worms are living under her skin. After the passing, the filmmaker revisits her hometown in hopes of weaving reminiscences of their past memories. The unpleasant condition of the space confronts her with truths on ageing, change and mortality.

The Headhunter’s Daughter
Dir. Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan | Philippines | 2021 | 15′

Leaving her family behind, Lynn traverses the harrowing roads of the Cordilleran highlands to try her luck in the city as a country singer.

Competition Programme 3

The Wheels Have Stopped From Rolling
Dir. John Thomas Trinidad | Philippines | 2021 | 11′

With repurposed home videos and mobile footage collected in 7 years, it explores life as a field of opposing forces, relationships as variables, and growing up as something material.

A Grandpa’s Uniform and the Other Things of Fear (Pedhut)
Dir. Christian Banisrael | Indonesia | 2021 | 20′

An old man who’s trapped in his past, stole the army uniform to chase away the ghosts that terrorize his long nights.

Blinded by the Light (แสงมัวบอด)
Dir. Chanasorn Chaikitiporn | Thailand | 2021 | 22′

Blinded by the Light is a two-channel video installation commissioned by Thai Film Archive in celebration of 124th anniversary of the birth of Thai cinema. The film aims to interrogate double- sided effects of how cinema itself has changed and developed through time, and how it affected both workers in film productions and its audiences along its journey.

The House of Brick and Stone
Dir. Ananth Subramaniam | Malaysia | 2022 | 15′

In 2015, in the aftermath of the world’s greatest financial sham, a Malaysian child found solace and guidance from an unlikely figurehead. The docu-fiction uses the juxtaposition of its namesake as a jumping-off point to create a highly evocative odyssey through the Malaysian youth consciousness.

Competition Programme 4

A Sabbath on the Longest Day of the Year
Dir. Edmund M. Telmo | Philippines | 2021 | 15′

It is the day that the Blessed Virgin of Cotta will return to its home in the city. It is also the day that Historia, a young novice nun, will take her vows. Her friend, Criselda, who is suffering from an insomnia that slowly erases her memories, is about to hear the execution of her mother on the same day. While their lives are about to change, they both defy the day with their mundane desires. It is not a coincidence that all these happen on the longest day of the year, the summer solstice.

Grandma Broken Leg (Cái Chân Gãy Của Bà Tôi)
Dir. Huỳnh Công Nhớ | Vietnam | 2021 | 13‘

The story of my grandmother and her belief in God. Before breaking her leg, she always watched and believed in a famous online priest – he healed many people, then because of his popularity, the government asked him to move out of the church. After the accident, laid down and was depressed, my grandmother like other believers, would faith be lost when events occurred.

February 1st
Dir. Leila Macaire & Mo Mo | Myanmar, France | 2021 | 12′

February 1st 2021: the military staged a coup in the republic of Myanmar. Through the portraits of two women filmmakers, one Burmese the other French, who have both witnessed the country in a very different light, this visual documentary explores through a travel diary their reflection toward art, revolution and freedom.

Plastic Sonata
Dir. Nelson Yeo | Singapore | 2022 | 30′

In covid-plagued Singapore, people begin to fear reality and feel a growing sense of uncertainty. Plastic Sonata tells the story of three individuals as they face the global crisis, impending loneliness and their family.

Competition Programme 5

Rocks in a Windless Wadi (Kalmanting batu-batu king malanging lambak a alang angin)
Dir. EJ Gagui | Philippines | 2021 | 23′

The filmmaker and his younger brother filmed a wadi they describe as “windless” for being too quiet. With archives of footage and audio conversations, it recreates a lonely character contemplating to the deep muffled voices of the unseen real people; stillness of rocks to the unmoving conflict. The dialogues within the wordless exposé tackle traumatic memories as they become urgent stories relevant to both the past and the present.

Notes from the Periphery
Dir. Tulapop Saenjaroen | Thailand, UK | 2021 | 13′

Mainly shot in the peripheral areas of the ever-expanding Laem Chabang port in Chon Buri, Thailand, Notes from the Periphery interrogates the notion of territoriality, globalized networks, and ownership through fragmented relations of the affected sites and communities nearby, shipping containers that become a policing tool, and the life cycle of a barnacle.

The Farmer (Sokoguru)
Dir. Eko Fitri Yulyanto | Indonesia | 2022 | 25′

Baskoro trying to continue his life as organic farmer inherited from his grandpa. Every knowledge about organic farming and memories about his granpa become his power for survive and regenerate as organic farmer.

Fantastic Fruits (Buah Dahsyat)
Dir. Khairullah Rahim | Singapore | 2022 | 7′

Buah Dahsyat (Fantastic Fruits) is a short film capturing the veiled and coded lives of residents in Boon Lay, Singapore through enigmatic fruits acting as multifarious symbols for intersecting themes including everyday rituals, desire, social mobility and labour. Anchored by the voice of drag queen Luna Thicc, the fruits’ behaviour and habits become enmeshed with found footage, smartphone videos and kitsch popular culture imagery.