Sylvia Chang Backs Malaysian Grief Drama 'One Fine Day' at Busan

Sylvia Chang, one of Asia's most recognized film figures, has joined the Malaysian grief drama "One Fine Day" as executive producer. Director Tan Seng Kiat presents the project this week at the Asian Project Market, running within the Busan International Film Festival's Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM).

The film follows a family of four that becomes three after their nine-year-old daughter is sexually assaulted and killed. With the case still unsolved, the father fixates on tracking down the killer, the mother turns to religion, and their teenage son carries an untruth he has kept to himself. The filmmakers bill the project as a film less about cracking a murder than about the ordinary days that follow a devastating loss.

What drives the story?

Tan drew on a real child murder in Malaysia. What stayed with him, he says, was not the crime itself but the family left behind. Public attention tends to concentrate on the culprit, the investigation and whether justice is served, while the family still has to get up, eat and go to work in a world that continues as if nothing has changed.

"I wanted to explore how people live through something unbearable, while still having to face the ordinary routines of everyday life," Tan said.

He resists offering neat answers about grief. "Even within the same family, people can experience the same loss but cope with it in very different ways. They may love each other deeply, yet struggle to understand one another," he said. Tan plans to trace those shifts through small moments: a family dinner, a conversation, a silence, or the absence of something once there.

"Above all, I hope audiences will see these characters not just as victims of tragedy, but as ordinary people trying to find a way to live with something they cannot change," Tan said.

Who is making it, and what happens next?

The script is in development after several years of work, with Malaysian and Taiwanese partners pushing toward production. Chang and producer Elyce Chin say Tan has wanted to make the film for more than five years. They cite his sensitive handling of the material and his focus on the family's everyday life, calling it a story "both deeply personal and universal." Lim Shu Jia and E.N. Lee also produce.

In Busan, the team is seeking co-producers, financing and pre-sales. They also want to test how a Malaysian story can connect with audiences from other cultures.

Tan is simultaneously developing "The Supermum and Three Stickmen," a comedy drawn from real events. In it, a single mother saving for her son's wedding is robbed of her nest egg and tries to win the stolen cash back. After years immersed in grief, Tan says, he wants to examine relationships through humor and absurdity, though both films share his interest in how ordinary people react when life takes a sudden turn.