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Singapore’s first winning film at Sundance gets local release date

SINGAPORE — Singaporean filmmaker Kirsten Tan’s award winning feature Pop Aye will be screened here from April 13 in Golden Village cinemas.

Singapore's first winning film entry at Sundance will be released in Singapore Golden Village cinemas on 13 April. Photo: Golden Village Pictures Pte Ltd

Singapore's first winning film entry at Sundance will be released in Singapore Golden Village cinemas on 13 April. Photo: Golden Village Pictures Pte Ltd

SINGAPORE — Singaporean filmmaker Kirsten Tan’s award winning feature Pop Aye will be screened here from April 13 in Golden Village cinemas.

Pop Aye, Singapore’s first winning film entry at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival this year, is about two misfits — an architect past his prime, Thana, played by veteran Thai singer-songwriter Thaneth Warakulnukroh, and his displaced street elephant Popeye (the elephant Bong from Thailand’s main “elephant city”, Surin). The two embark on a road trip through rural Thailand.

Singapore audiences will finally get to enjoy the humour, heartache and drama of these two quirky characters on their road trip, which resonated with overseas audiences and received glowing reviews.

“She (Tan) has also distilled her bohemian travels around the country into this movie’s journey that is both authentically off-the-beaten track and something more metaphorical, with the elephant Pop Aye gradually assuming a significance on the level of Rosebud in Citizen Kane,” wrote Variety film critic, Maggie Lee.

Tan’s feature film debut was a hot film festival favourite this year. Besides bagging the Special Jury Award for Screenwriting in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition at Sundance in Park City, Utah, the film also took the VPRO Big Screen Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands — another first for Singapore films.

The film is executive produced by director Anthony Chen of Ilo Ilo fame, in association with A Girl And A Gun and 185 Films, with the participation of the Singapore Film Commission, and funded by the Torino Film Lab. The movie is co-distributed in Singapore by Giraffe Pictures and Golden Village Pictures.

Tan, who is currently based in New York, posted on Facebook this morning that she is “tremendously excited” about her film being shown in her home country.

“After our travel through North America and Europe, I’m so, so glad to be bringing this home. Really thrilled and curious to see how Singaporeans will react to the film. All I can say is — it’ll definitely be fun,” she wrote.

“Come soon because as with all indie films, am not sure how long this will last on the big screen,” she added.

Golden Village is also holding a special dialogue session, Blog Aloud: Pop Aye, with Tan on April 6 at GV Plaza. The audience will hear Tan speak on the making of her first feature film, and be one of the first in Singapore to watch the film. Tickets to that session are S$15.

Advance tickets for Pop Aye go on sale from March 23 at Golden Village cinemas and on www.gv.com.sg

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