Anthony Chen on ‘Growing Up’ Trilogy and New Korean Film

Singaporean director Anthony Chen, whose producing credits include the Singapore-Korea co-production “Ajoomma,” is returning to Korean-connected territory with a new project.

Speaking at a Shanghai International Film Festival masterclass alongside frequent collaborator Yeo Yann Yann, Chen revealed he has been collaborating on a script with a Korean writer for about two years – as the two reflected on the 14-year journey through his “Growing Up” trilogy of films “Ilo Ilo,” “Wet Season,” and “We Are All Strangers.”

Together with actor Koh Jia Ler, the trio have formed a cinema family of sorts across the three films, with the bond seeing all three through different seasons in their lives. When Chen shot “Ilo Ilo,” he was in his 20s and Yeo was just about to become a mother. By “We Are All Strangers,” he has also become a father and is 40; she is almost 50.

“In these three movies, it recorded our different age groups, our experiences, our dreams, our hopes, and our anger,” said Yeo.

Yeo revealed that Chen had strong reservations about her playing the lead in “Ilo Ilo” when she told him she was having her first child. Chen eventually rewrote the role to accommodate her pregnancy, and got her consent to film it for the final film. By “Wet Season,” she was coming out of postpartum depression.
“It had already started to get better, and I could start working. So to me, it was also a very big turning point in life, because postpartum depression almost crushed me, almost making it impossible for me to live on,” Yeo said.

Chen acknowledged how much of that lived experience had found its way into the work. “Whether it is her, or me, or the combination of the three of us, actually we have thrown the things we experienced, including emotions and feelings, into the movies,” he said.

The masterclass also highlighted Chen’s exacting approach to directing performances. He recalled Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien telling him: “What you didn’t shoot won’t be in the film.” “If you did not capture that emotion in camera, it will not present itself on the editing table,” Chen added.

For Chen, all performance exists within pauses and breaths. “A lot of times, what I am directing is the breathing and pauses, and I am particularly sensitive to this truth and falseness,” he said.

Closing out the session, Chen, who is serving this year as the head of the Shanghai Asian new talents jury, urged younger filmmakers to shoot short films – and a lot of them – pointing out that he completed roughly 10 before ever attempting a feature. Short films, he said, teach directors how to coach actors, establish a directing style, and learn how to place the camera.

“We Are All Strangers,” which premiered in competition at the Berlinale earlier this year, follows two Singapore families – strangers gradually forced to become one – in an intergenerational story of found kinship. It is a theme Chen has returned to across all three films.

On his Korean project, which was previously announced with the title “Sunset Park,” Chen said: “It’s a Korean movie and it is also cross-cultural, in both English and Korean. It’s a comic take on a tragic story and again talks about strangers with no relations becoming family.”

“Sunset Park” recounts a surprising journey in the U.S. made by a Korean father with his son’s room mate, after the man receives tragic news about his son. 

“It is that kind of story again. I feel I didn’t choose it, but my subconscious keeps coming back to the theme,” Chen said.