mm2 Entertainment to produce film student's maiden full length feature

SINGAPORE — A personal encounter with an autistic teenager he met in church — who offered to pray for him — inspired Leroy Lim so much that he made a short film about autism.

Thanks to that leap of faith, the film student’s short had so impressed mm2 Entertainment, a leading producer of notable movies such as Ah Boys to Men and 1965, that they have opted to produce Leroy's first full-length film.

I Believe, the short directed by the 24-year-old, is a captivating and heartfelt story about Peter, a popular role model student (played by stage actor Joshua Lim) and Anthony, an autistic young man (Ah Boys To Men’s Maxi Lim).

With fellow Lasalle College of the Arts schoolmates Nikko Koh as producer and Dhinesh Ravichandran as screenwriter, the 16-minute short was one of the entries submitted by 20 groups of aspiring young filmmakers for this year’s 20/20 — The Temasek Short Film Project, organised by Temasek Holdings and facilitated by mm2 Entertainment.

Over a four-month period, I Believe was the most-watched film compared to the other entries, garnering more than 130,000 views across Facebook and YouTube.

Lim admitted that he was surprised by the warm reception the film received. “The team had its doubts because it is a very personal story, has a religious subtext and there were people who told us they found it hard to watch people with autism or who are disabled on screen.”

“Still, we hope the film’s message — to understand and accept people who are different from us — will get across to anyone who watches it,” he mused.

Lim said getting the casting right for his short was also important. “I have an interesting audition process — the first question I asked each auditionee was, ‘Do you know what autism is?’ Practically no one knew except for a few,” Lim revealed. “I will then explain to them that it’s not a sickness, it’s not a mental condition, it’s a developmental difference.”

He added: “I felt that casting those who understand the autism message clearly will help the film much more as we need to grab the audience’s attention in the first minute or else we will lose them.”

To make the screenplay as authentic as possible, Lim invited Dhinesh to meet up with his friend, who is autistic. The meeting subsequently inspired the film’s running theme that “smoking is bad”, which was repeatedly uttered by the film’s autistic character Anthony, after Lim’s friend caught Dhinesh smoking and was earnestly concerned for his health.

mm2 Entertainment’s managing director Ng Say Yong told TODAY that it was a fairly easy decision for the company to sign Lim up as I Believe was generally acknowledged as the most accomplished Project 20/20 entry. “It has great storytelling and good film-making techniques. A personal story told with passion and emotional authenticity. It was also the most watched film that reached out to a lot of people, and was even picked by a foreign film festival.”

Ng added: “mm2 is always in the business of developing new talents as the industry needs it. You can’t depend on old faces, you have to look for new people. All vibrant industries need it. That is why we chose Leroy. He still has to hone his skills but if things go well, we expect his first full movie to be out within two years.”

SELF-CONFESSED NERD

Lim admitted that it took a while for the news that mm2 wanted to produce his maiden full-length film to sink in. “It was intimidating, exciting and humbling. I felt very lucky as I’m not even out of film school and it is something my fellow cohort would kill for!”

A fan of Steven Spielberg and Spike Jones, Lim did not intentionally set out wanting to be a film director. He first started getting interested in camera work while in secondary school, and then took up communications in polytechnic.

He enrolled at Lasalle College of the Arts to learn cinematography and had the chance to direct a first-year project entitled Sek Fun (Cantonese for “eat rice”). “It was then I felt that I might be able to direct, that it is something I can work on.”

A self-confessed nerd, the student director loves sci-fi films such as Star Wars and A.I., and “people movies” such as Forrest Gump and Her. He is presently working on themes and concepts for his first studio film. “I’ve been playing with a firefighting idea as I was with the Civil Defence Force and I found it to be very dramatic.”

He is grateful to mm2 who is supporting him with mentors and resources. “They told me to ‘tell a story that you want to tell, that is poignant to you’. That was reassuring for me as I was wondering if I needed to do a very commercial film.”

I Believe will have its first overseas screening in Italy in December where it has been selected for the AS Film Festival, an international film and visual art festival managed by people with Asperger Syndrome. “The organisers saw the film on YouTube and emailed us to say they want to screen it under the Reasonably Different category,” Lim recalled.

“I hope audiences there, like those who watched it online here, will take away the message that ‘I have a lot to learn — whether it’s about faith or that people with autism are no different or less important than you are’.”

I Believe can be watched on Youtube at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE4e26I0c4w