Festival Team

Sam I–shan is an independent curator focusing on time-based media, photography, and art and politics. She programmes for film festivals, specialising in artist films and video, and Southeast Asian experimental cinema, working with Singapore International Film Festival, MMCA Korea’s Asian Film and Video Art Forum, Art SG Film and Videoex Zurich. She was previously curator at National Gallery Singapore, Singapore Art Museum and Esplanade Visual Arts. She lives and works in Singapore and Cambodia.

Hsieh I-Hsuan is a film curator, writer, and researcher based in Amsterdam and Taipei. She currently programs for Women Make Waves Film Festival Taiwan and the SGIFF. Since 2022, she has served on the selection committee for TIDF. Her independent curatorial projects have been presented at Barbican Centre, Eye Filmmuseum, WORM, and others. She also offers festival strategy consultancy for short films and documentaries, edits Taiwan Documentary E-Paper, and is a member of the Taiwan Film Critics Society. Her writing focuses on non-fiction and Asian cinema, with attention to underrepresented perspectives.

Richard Bolisay is a writer, film critic, programmer, and educator from the Philippines. He is the author of Break it to Me Gently: Essays on Filipino Film (2019) and Nothing Deep (2022), both finalists for the Philippine National Book Awards. He also edited the anthology Daang Dokyu: A Festival of Philippine Documentaries (2020) and co-organised the Alternative Cinema Initiatives Conference (2019). An alumnus of the Berlinale Talent Press and Locarno Critics Academy, he is currently a PhD student in the Department of Film Studies at the University of St Andrews.

Sim Jiaying is the founder of the Singapore Film Database, a comprehensive digital resource on Singapore’s film ecosystem. She holds a PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of Glasgow, with research focusing on Asian cinema and the intersections of film, culture, and gender. Her writing has appeared in Jom, Film-Philosophy, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and in anthologies by University of Edinburgh Press and Routledge. She is currently a 2025 Hyundai Artlab Editorial Fellow.

Wiwat Lertwiwatwongsa a cinephile, film critic, writer, and editorial team member of Film Club Thailand. He is also the founder of Wildtype, a loose group of Thai cinephiles that organises film screenings, and seminars, and publishes film books in Thailand. Since 2008, Wiwat has curated and organised a series of Thai short film screenings called Filmvirs Wildtype, which focuses on overlooked Thai short films. Since 2018, he has collaborated with the Documentary Club to program film events and organise documentary film festivals.

Qila Gill is a film programmer. Currently Associate Programmer at London Short Film Festival and serves on the selection committees for the London Film Festival (Experimenta), Berlinale Generation, and Berlinale Shorts and is a programmer for Singapore International Film Festival.

Vess Chua is a Bangkok and Singapore-based film programmer drawn to films exploring speculative histories, collective anxieties, and resistance in Southeast Asian cinema. Currently pursuing a master’s in Curatorial Practice at Chulalongkorn University, her research aims to cultivate a more receptive environment for time-based media within film festivals.

She is a Programmer for the Singapore International Film Festival and serves on viewing committees for Movies That Matter (NL) and Montreal International Documentary Festival (CA). Previously, she managed the Singapore Youth Film Festival and worked with Perspectives Film Festival first as Programmer, then as Festival Director.

Gabriel Goh is an independent film programmer based in Singapore whose curatorial practice intersects cinema scholarship with experimental programming methodologies. His work explores the representation of time and idleness in Southeast Asian cinema while most recently experimenting with collaborative filtering models and recommender systems as alternative approaches to programming. Since 2021, Gabriel has developed and overseen the Undercurrent section at the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF), a platform dedicated to showcasing bold contemporary artist films from around the world. Outside work, he enjoys tinkering with Super8 films and documenting tifo displays at lower-league football matches.

Ryan Pagdanganan programmes films at the Singapore International Film Festival. His practice treads around his residence between cultures and translates into an enduring curiosity of the mundane everyday. His photographs have been plastered at FilmNeverDie (2020) in Melbourne and Ephemere (2023) in Tokyo. His static words are sprinkled around in places such as Bog Bodies Press (2024) and Reboot (2023) while his more interactive work lives in several corners of the internet.

With two decades of experience in the Singapore Film Industry, Mabelyn has been a Line Producer on landmark Singapore films, a Film Educator with the local film institutions and has finally come full circle, returning to the place where it all started for her when she was a little wide-eyed volunteer years ago – the Singapore International Film Festival.

Wilson Teh is a Partnerships and Development Executive at SGIFF, where he is dedicated to fostering meaningful collaborations and expanding the festival’s outreach. Before joining SGIFF, Wilson was deeply involved in the Impact Investing and Sustainability space, directing capital toward meaningful causes. He brings this same intentionality to his work at the festival—leveraging Outreach and Fundraising to support projects that uplift lesser-reached communities and create space for diverse voices in cinema. An active dancer, Wilson’s current practice explores the new wave of commercial Afro dance and its cultural roots, deepening his understanding of movement as both an art form and a means of historical dialogue.

Krystalle Teh is a writer and cinephile from Singapore. Before joining the Festival team as its Marketing Executive, she previously participated in the Festival’s Youth Jury & Critics Programme in 2021. Her film criticism has appeared with Asian Film Archive and Phnom Penh-based film magazine MARG1N. Her short fiction has appeared in SUSPECT journal. She is at work on a series of short stories on violent desires.