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 (Experimental), Berlinale Generation, and Berlinale Shorts and is a programmer for Singapore International Film Festival.

Vess Chua is a film programmer based between Bangkok and Singapore. She programmes for the Singapore International Film Festival and serves on viewing committees for Movies That Matter (NL) and Montreal International Documentary Festival (CA). Previously, she worked with the Singapore Youth Film Festival and the Perspectives Film Festival.

She is 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.

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.

Dennis Lim is a film curator and writer, and currently the Artistic Director of the New York Film Festival. From 2013 to 2022, he was Film at Lincoln Center’s year-round Director of Programming. He has also served as Film Editor of the Village Voice and was the programmer of the Flaherty Seminar in 2010. His writing has appeared in Artforum, Cinema Scope, the Criterion Collection, Film Comment, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, and he has taught at Columbia, Harvard, NYU, and Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola. He is the author of Tale of Cinema (2022), a monograph on Hong Sangsoo, and The Man From Another Place (2015), a critical biography of David Lynch that has been translated into three languages.

Bridget Zhang currently assists the Programme team at the Singapore International Film Festival. She has held positions at the J. Paul Getty Museum, USC Pacific Asia Museum, and OCHI Gallery. Interested in the stories carried through visual and material culture across time, she spent last summer excavating a Chinese Bronze Age tomb and continues to seek traces of everyday human experience through film and photography.

Syahmi Hashim is a Programme Assistant at the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) and a Singapore-based image maker whose visual practice explores space and storytelling through lens-based mediums. With experience as a Projectionist at The Projector and a Research Assistant at Wild Rice, he has contributed to cultural projects including Singapore’s first LGBT film festival, Short Circuit 7, and collaborated as a visual artist in Spectrum of Sentiment (Kuala Lumpur, 2024; George Town, 2025). A speaker at Singapore Writers Festival 2023 and alumnus of Objectifs’ 2022 Young Photographers’ Mentorship, Syahmi remains committed to cultivating inclusive cinematic spaces while advancing his artistic practice through visual storytelling.

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.

Prudence Goh is a freelance producer passionate about film, storytelling, and the arts. Guided by a belief in the power of stories to connect, question, and inspire, she brings a thoughtful and hands-on approach to her work. With roots in narrative craft and creative production, she thrives on the messy yet rewarding process of creation, and is driven by the collaborative energy that brings stories to life.

Rei Soon is an illustrator and currently designs for SGIFF. She creates visuals that grace SGIFF’s social media channels and the big screens at the festival. Before joining SGIFF, she studied Animation & Visual Effects at Nanyang Polytechnic, where she worked as a visual development artist on several projects. In her spare time, she dabbles in graphic design and illustration. Her illustrative work explores Singaporean culture and art, which includes an animated short film about Chinese opera.

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.

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.

Esther Goh is a creative producer with over nine years of experience across major events, festivals, film production, and music and arts programming. At SGIFF, she is Festival Manager, overseeing operations and guest experiences. She has led and supported projects with the National Arts Council, Arts House Limited, National Heritage Board, Sport Singapore, Mediacorp, and Bandwagon Asia. Grounded in her background as an arts manager, she brings cultural sensitivity, critical listening, and systems thinking to her work. Outside of excel sheets, she’s usually chasing down gigs and events, or sipping tequila long after last call.

Cavin Lim is a Singaporean lens-based media artist and Festival Assistant. His practice focuses on photography and video to explore memory, time, and identity, often incorporating alternative printing processes. He was nominated for the Takifuji International Art Award in 2025 and has exhibited at Earl Lu Gallery, ICAS Gallery, and Alliance Française de Singapour. Beyond his artistic work, he draws inspiration from personal relationships, film, and sensory experiences to inform his practice.

Isha Wang is a Singapore-based animator and storyboard artist who joins SGIFF as a festival assistant, where they help coordinate day-to-day operations and scheduling. They hold a BFA in Animation & Digital Arts from the University of Southern California and have worked as a freelance storyboard artist on a variety of commercial and independent projects. A cinephile with a flair for the melodramatic, Isha’s work spans the entertainment landscape—from assisting on set at Giraffe Pictures, distributions at EST Media to illustrating comics for the Singapore Art Book Fair.

Shailesh Nathan is a self-taught filmmaker passionate about storytelling through short films that explore social issues and human experiences. His work has gained recognition at notable festivals, including the Mental Health Film Festival Singapore and the Tamil Nadu Film Festival, where his films have been selected and awarded. Currently, he is channeling his creativity into producing more impactful shorts and developing his first Tamil feature film. Beyond filmmaking, Shailesh enjoys exploring diverse narratives through reading novels, engaging with local theatre, and immersing himself in music, which continue to inspire him in his cinematic storytelling.

Nadhra is an arts and entertainment manager specialising in music and festival making. She has worked on Rock & Indie Festival (2023), AXEAN Festival (2023), Music Day Out! (2024), and most recently, Singapore HeritageFest (2025). She completed her BA(Hons) in Arts Management at LASALLE College of the Arts where she investigated cultural barriers to audience engagement in the arts as part of her final dissertation. As a budding poet, Nadhra’s writing is inspired by her personal life and her everyday experiences. Poetry affords her to constantly connect and reflect on herself and the people around her which in turn informs her worldview and the way she builds rapport with people.

Shining is an accomplished Production Stage Manager with a strong background in dance, live performance, and multidisciplinary productions. She was the Production Stage Manager at T.H.E Dance Company from 2013 to 2016, touring widely and contributing to many of their key works.
In 2017, with support from the Singapore National Arts Council, she joined City Contemporary Dance Company in Hong Kong as Assistant to the Technical Director for Post-Perception/Transcendence by Sang Jijia. That same year, she began her ongoing role as Gala Events Manager at the Singapore International Film Festival, overseeing major events including opening screenings and the Silver Screen Awards.
Her concert production credits include Disney in Concert in Singapore and Malaysia, and collaborations with artists such as David Tao, Sunset Rollercoaster, Accused Five, and An Pu. In 2025, she received a second National Arts Council grant to work with Farooq Chaudhry (Fengling Productions, UK) on two upcoming projects, and also collaborated with award-winning Art Director Tim Yip on a commissioned production by Standard Chartered Bank in London.
Shining is also an Adjunct Lecturer at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts’ School of Dance and continues to work with independent artists and companies, bringing a thoughtful and collaborative approach to every production.

Gerald is a freelance lighting programmer, systems engineer, and technical coordinator based in Singapore. He specializes in lighting programming for a variety of shows, most notably Baybeats 2023, The Night of Star Voices 2024, The Spring Symphony Concert 2025, and the F1 Singapore Grand Prix 2025. Gerald has also branched into lighting design, serving as Associate Lighting Designer for SIFA’s Umbilical.

Zoey is an Event Assistant at SGIFF and a BA graduate in Performance Making (Theatre) in collaboration with the University of the Arts London, where she gained valuable insights into the arts scene and its challenging conversations. She has worked as an assistant stage manager on various productions, developing a strong interest in collaborative storytelling and the processes that bring performances to life.

Nigel is a huge cinephile, spending most of his time watching films or reading about them. Believing that art is an important space, he helps out in events focusing on arts. Previously volunteering in SGIFF, he now joins the team as an Event Assistant. When he’s not watching film, he bartends at a bar telling stories from his craft on another medium.

Kiran Kaur is a seasoned PR professional drawn irrevocably to the architecture of brands. Over the years, she has worked with an eclectic mix of clients across the beauty, luxury, F&B, and nightlife sectors—crafting narratives that resonate beyond the page and translate feeling into form. As Festival Events Planner at the Singapore International Film Festival, she merges her expertise in branding, communications, and creative strategy to curate meaningful experiences that foster community through cinema. Outside of work, she is a poet who can often be found holding one-woman concerts in her room.