Awards and festivals

Film description

Police detective Lok takes on a case of finding missing Chinese migrant worker, Wang. His partner seems to be indifferent about the mysterious disappearance but Lok leaves the land reclaimaition worksite deeply disturbed and keeps digging the case, also in order to deal with his sleeplessness. It turns out Wang suffered a worksite injury, with the broken arm he was assigned to drive the company's truck to transport goods and workers between dorms and construction sites. He made friends with one Bangladeshi worker but both of them are anxious about repatriation. Unable to sleep, Wang started frequenting a cybercafé in the middle of the night where he got fascinated by the tough and disenchanted young woman running the place. Yet he formed an online friendship with a mysterious gamer and disappeared without a trace. The mystery is hidden under the Singapore's reclaimed land.  

Yeo Siew Hua creates a nuanced depiction of Singapore's society and goes deep into the mechanisms of interactions between the inhabitants of seemingly harmonious, multicultural world city. In "A Land Imagined" he shows the industrial side of Singapore, amazes with visual style, enigmatic atmosphere and complicated non-linear storyline. If Lynchian nightmarish noir style is not really black but all in pastels, Yeo's noir is in fluorescent colours. 

Maja Korbecka