Singapore Film Festival Awards Debut Feature in Asian Competition

Ang Geck Geck Priscilla’s debut feature, "Ah Girl," won best film in the Asian Feature Film Competition at the Singapore International Film Festival on Saturday. The award was presented at the Singtel Waterfront Theatre during the penultimate day of the 37th edition of the festival, which concludes on Nov. 1.

The film depicts a seven-year-old girl living in Singapore during the 1990s whose parents have separated. Ang developed the project at the festival’s Southeast Asian Film Lab in 2015. Prior to this feature, her 2012 short, "Broken Crayon," won the best short film prize at the Singapore Short Film Awards. She is also a graduate of the Busan Asian Film Academy.

Shahrbanoo Sadat, an Afghan filmmaker who has resided in Germany since 2021, won the best director award for "No Good Men." The drama, which opened the Berlinale, is set in Kabul shortly before the Taliban returned to power. It follows a camerawoman whose professional and personal freedoms are threatened. Sadat previously directed "Wolf and Sheep," which premiered at Cannes in 2016, and "The Orphanage" in 2019.

The jury split the best performance award between two actors. Pushpa Thing Lama was recognized for her role in "Elephants in the Fog," a story about a member of Nepal’s Kinnar community searching for a missing daughter. Putri Marino shared the honor for "Four Seasons in Java," a magical realist drama about a woman returning to her hometown after twenty years in prison.

Nagahisa Makoto received the Special Jury Prize for "Burn," his second feature film that premiered at Sundance. The Japanese director also won awards at that festival for his 2017 short "And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool" and his 2019 feature "We Are Little Zombies." In the Southeast Asian Short Film Competition, Arief Budiman’s "Golden Island" was named the best Southeast Asian short.

Arief Budiman is a Yogyakarta-based artist and filmmaker whose short film, which competed at Rotterdam, follows videographers from Java and Papua creating a film together. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke won best director for "The Bovine Comedy," a Locarno premiere set in 2036 where cows are nearly extinct. His 2025 debut, "A Useful Ghost," won the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at Cannes and earned a special mention at the Singapore International Film Festival.

The festival also recognized industry figures earlier in the event. Indian actor Aamir Khan received the SGIFF Screen Icon Award on Oct. 22. Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu, who released "Sheep in the Box" and "Look Back" this year, was presented with the SGIFF Cinema Honorary Award on Oct. 24. The Silver Screen Awards, launched in 1991, was the first international film competition to include a dedicated section for Asian cinema.