'Ah Girl' Takes Best Film at Singapore's Silver Screen Awards

Singaporean filmmaker Ang Geck Geck Priscilla's debut feature "Ah Girl" won Best Film in the Asian Feature Film Competition at the Silver Screen Awards on Saturday. The ceremony took place at the Singtel Waterfront Theatre on the penultimate day of the 37th Singapore International Film Festival, which runs through November 1.

"Ah Girl" follows a seven-year-old girl in 1990s Singapore whose parents have separated. Ang workshopped the project at the festival's Southeast Asian Film Lab in 2015. The film went on to take the Youth Jury Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Ang is an alumna of the Busan Asian Film Academy, and her 2012 short "Broken Crayon" won the Singapore Short Film Awards' best short film prize.

Who else won in the feature competition?

Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat won Best Director for "No Good Men," which opened the Berlinale. Set in Kabul just before the Taliban return to power, the drama follows a camerawoman whose work, family and freedom are suddenly in doubt. Sadat has lived in Germany since 2021. She made the 2016 Cannes premiere "Wolf and Sheep" and 2019's "The Orphanage."

The jury split the Best Performance prize. Pushpa Thing Lama was honored for "Elephants in the Fog," about a member of Nepal's third-gender Kinnar community searching for her missing daughter. Putri Marino shared the award for "Four Seasons in Java," a magical realist drama about a woman who returns to her hometown after two decades behind bars.

The Special Jury Prize went to Japanese director Nagahisa Makoto's "Burn," his second feature, which premiered at Sundance. Nagahisa won awards at the same festival for his short "And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool" (2017) and his feature "We Are Little Zombies" (2019).

What happened in the short film competitions?

In the Southeast Asian Short Film Competition, Yogyakarta-based artist-filmmaker Arief Budiman's "Golden Island" was named Best Southeast Asian Short. The Rotterdam competitor follows a videographer from Java and another from Papua making a film about Papua together. Thai director Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke won Best Director for "The Bovine Comedy," a Locarno premiere set in a 2036 where cows have nearly died out. His feature debut "A Useful Ghost" (2025) won the Critics' Week Grand Prize at Cannes and received a special mention at SGIFF.

German-Indonesian filmmaker Berthold Wahjudi took the shorts Special Jury Prize for "'Vaterland' or A Bule Named Yanto," which premiered in Cannes' Critics' Week. Sarah Lingam won Best Performance for "Flame of the Forest," about a young nurse who returns home and is blamed for her grandmother's death. Singaporean experimental animator Exyl's "Singapore God" was named Best Singapore Short.

The Audience Choice Award went to Singapore Panorama Programme 2, "Second Life, Second Skin," a package of five shorts:

• "Kiss Me Climax" — Shara Tay
• "Subterranea" — Ash Goh Hua
• "Reanimator" — Syahmi Iman
• "Orang Minyak" — Leon Cheo
• "Encik" — Ewan Leong

What does the festival mean for the region's filmmakers?

The SGIFF Pro Pitching Forum, held October 30, handed out four prizes:

• SGIFF Pro Pitching Forum Award: "Agape" — Yamaguchi Shin, Miyahara Takuya
• SGIFF Pro Pitching Forum Award (Asian Producers Network): "Dear Son An" — Lệ Diễm Hà
• SGIFF Abroad Award supported by Sony: "Beg, Borrow, Steal" — Tong Khoon Mun, Zhou Ke Xin
• SGIFF Abroad Award: "Primal" — Sam Chua Weishi, Rein Maychaelson

Earlier in the festival, Indian star Aamir Khan received the SGIFF Screen Icon Award from Peter Chan during an In Conversation With session on October 22. Kore-eda Hirokazu, who released two features this year, "Sheep in the Box" and "Look Back," received the SGIFF Cinema Honorary Award from Boo Junfeng on October 24.

Launched in 1991, the Silver Screen Awards was the first international film competition to include a dedicated section for Asian cinema. This year's winners — a debut director, an exiled Afghan filmmaker and a pair of Thai and Indonesian auteurs — show the prize still functions as a launching pad for work that circulates through Rotterdam, Cannes, Locarno and Sundance.