In 1994 Singapore, two years after the national ban on chewing gum, a seven-year-old girl runs an illicit schoolyard confectionery trade while her family falls apart at home. Writer-director Ang Geck Geck Priscilla turns this memory into her debut feature, Ah Girl, which heads to the Toronto International Film Festival for its North American premiere this September.
The film frames the breakdown of a marriage entirely through the eyes of its young protagonist, played by newcomer Ong Xuan Jing. While her parents drift into separate lives and new partners, Ah Girl stays in a small flat with her younger sister Ah Tian, an exhausted father working night shifts, and a sharp-tongued grandmother. When her mother asks her to choose where to live, the child faces a dilemma that changes her world.
“I made AH GIRL from a deeply personal place,” Ang explained. “Growing up, I learned that children often understand far more than adults realise. They may not always have the words to express what they are feeling, but they feel everything. They remember. And sometimes, the things left unsaid stay with us the longest.”
Framing the Unspoken
Shot in a tight 4:3 aspect ratio, the cinematography keeps the camera at a child’s eye level. Adults loom overhead, conversations happen behind half-closed doors, and major domestic upheavals arrive in fragmented moments.
“The performances of the kids, especially our titular Ah Girl, are sheer wonder,” noted Stefan Borsos of the International Film Festival Rotterdam selection committee. “I appreciate so much the director’s intelligence of using the camera format, height etc to experience the world from the (limited) children’s perspective.”
Ang built the feature from a series of acclaimed short films that began with Broken Crayon in 2013. The project secured international development backing through the Southeast Asia Fiction Film Lab and the Purin Film Fund, alongside support from the Singapore Film Commission.
“I wanted to tell a story about a broken family, from the perspective of a child going through the pressure and having to make important decisions that will affect her life to come,” Ang said.
Following award wins at Rotterdam and the Hong Kong International Film Festival, where Ong took home the acting prize, the production makes its Canadian debut at Scotiabank Theatre Toronto before heading to cinemas in Singapore later this year.
