Official selection
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2021
Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 2020
Hong Kong International Film Festival 2020
Hainan International Film Festival 2020
Singapore Chinese Film Festival 2021
Honors
Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival 2020 - Best New Director
Director
Chong Keat Aun
Writer
Chong Keat Aun
Cast
Goh Jojo, Tang Ling, Hoon Mei Sim, Chua Pearlly, Chee Season
Producer
Lim Hui Bee, Lim Kuen Hong
Cinematographer
Chan Hai Liang
Sound Designer
Tee Meng Jiam, Wei Chien Tee
Composer
Yii Kah Hoe
Editor
Kong Jing Rong, Tan Wei Jian
contact
Asteri Production Sdn Bhd
1987, in Alor Setar, at the foot of Mount Keriang in the Malaysian state of Kedah (formerly a part of Siam, or Thailand). A place at the crossroad of history and spirituality: Hinduism, Buddhism, Islamic and shamanistic cultures converge in the imposing mountain’s shadow. Cheong, a Chinese man, is a devout believer in folk god Datuk. One day, as he accidentally damages his neighbour’s fence, strange events befall him. His furious neighbour dies a mysterious death; he himself falls suddenly, violently, supernaturally ill. His wife Yan wonders: is her husband’s sudden downfall the manifestation of mere coincidence, tinged with superstition? Or the beginning of the journey to save his soul?
Based on the director’s lived childhood experience, Chong Keat Aun’s uncannily autobiographical THE STORY OF THE SOUTHERN ISLET – Winner of the Best New Director Award at the 57th Golden Horse Awards in Taipei – is one of the year’s most impressive, haunting debuts. A directorial sleight-of-hand in the transcendent slow cinema tradition of Tsai Ming-Liang or Apichatpong Weerasethakul – by way of folk horror, no less – Chong’s debut is a masterfully framed, deeply personal tale that takes the viewer to the limits of the rational world. A nostalgic vision of rural Malaysia comes to life, in which tradition clashes with encroaching modernity and the borders of the spirit world become porous, channelled by cinema itself as the conduit to the otherworldly. – Ariel Esteban Cayer