Filmmaker in Focus – Anthony Chen: Discover the World with Films
Beijing Film Panorama of the 13th Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF) features a section "Filmmaker in Focus: Anthony Chen", screening three feature films of Singaporean director Anthony Chen.
Anthony Chen at the Festival de Cannes
Since his debut film Ilo Ilo won the Camera d'Or at Festival de Cannes and joined the competition for the Academy Awards on behalf of Singaporean films, Anthony Chen was the first Singaporean to win an award at this festival, earning him an extensive concern in the film industry of the world and a great reputation on the international film festivals and markets.
Filming site of Ilo Ilo
With a number of popular works, he has become a representative among Chinese directors with foreign nationality. His second feature film Wet Season, which took six years for filming, won the Feimu Awards for Best Film, Best Actress, and Cinephilia Critics’ Awards at Pingyao Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon International Film Festival, and again competed for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
A Still of Wet Season
In 2023, his first English-language feature film, Drift, made by a team of international experts, was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, USA. The film, starring Cynthia Erivo, nominee of Academy Award for Best Actress and winner of Tony Awards and Grammy Awards, and Alia Shawkat, gaining fame as a child star, tells the story of a refugee on a seashore of Greece, which again demonstrated Chen’s ability of interpretation without restriction by national boundaries.
A Still of Drift
Chen is adept at shaping figures with subtle emotions on daily life. What’s more than that is his depiction over dialogues cross culture, boldly, gently, yet cooly, given his birth and growth on the land of Singapore, where East meets West and tradition meets modernity. In the macroscopic portrayal of the society of the times, he hidden the “fruits” of time in the Eastern culture of family logics, striking a chord among the modern society on the thinking of family members without consanguinity. 
A Still of Ilo Ilo
Ilo Ilo, a mirror of our childhood memories, writes about the kinship between a lonely child living in a highly-advanced and stressed city and a Filipino maid and implies the dislocation and struggle for motherhood. Wet Season, filled with joy and tears, happiness and sorrow, interprets the upset of a boy for rashly crossing the boundaries and the hardship of a middle-aged teacher in marriage and struggling to have a child. Based on the knowledge of story creator, we can see from the adapted film - Drift a specific image of a refugee in rags against the daughter living in an upper class in Africa, both of whom are reluctant to the situation and try to seek reconnection. In the film, suffering a great trauma, the daughter meets with a foreigner from another continent on this European resort, seeking comfort on emotions regardless of the gap in identity.
A Still of Drift
In Chen’s films, emotion is not only the force to drive the plot, but the intuitive experience of social relationships and life of the characters and the audience, expecting something but failing to get, bearing the pressure and getting over it, just like Tai Chi, always flowing and subsisting. Behind the superficial affinity and simplicity, Chen has a deep insight of contemporary world and continues cross-cultural narratives with films.
His first Chinese feature film The Breaking Ice is now in post-production. The film co-stars Zhou Dongyu, Liu Haoran and Qu Chuxiao and is about a story of love in North China under a world of ice and snow. It is expected to be screened in 2023.
Anthony Chen and crew members Kang Hyung-seok, Hong Huifang, He Shuming, and Shane Pow (left to right) from Ajoomma.
In addition to creations as a director, Chen continues to focus on and support the next generation of Asian filmmakers. The debut film of Singaporean director He Shuming--Ajoomma with Chen as executive producer will be premiered at the "B&R Asian Vision LENOVO Special Presentation” under Beijing Film Panorama.
For the purpose of the event, director Anthony Chen will be invited to the Meet-and-greets with Cast & Crew under Beijing Film Panorama of the 13th BJIFF to share his experience and creativity in filmmaking.
