City of Small Blessings
World Premiere
Wong Chen-Hsi Singapore 2024 110 min PG13 (Some Coarse Language)
A retired civil servant in Singapore resorts to desperate measures to prevent his house’s demolition for a new train line.
Retired civil servant Prakash and his wife Anna live in an old house with a lush garden. Their idyllic days there are numbered as the state has acquired their home, which will be demolished to make way for a new train line. Unwilling to accept this reality, Prakash seeks to amend the ruling, resorting to increasingly desperate measures that sour his relationships with his family. An unexpected invitation to meet the prime minister offers one final opportunity to make a personal appeal, but does not go as planned.
Helmed by emotional and dramatic performances, City of Small Blessings is a stirring portrait of one man’s deep love for his home, even as the country becomes increasingly unfamiliar and hostile to him.
Q&A with Filmmaker(s), Audience Choice Award
6 Dec, Fri 7:30PM / 110 min
Golden Village Cineleisure, Hall 1
AT THE FEST!
All screenings are on a free seating, first-come, first-served basis. We kindly ask all ticket holders to arrive on time. Latecomers may not be guaranteed entry.
RUSH QUEUE:
For last-minute attendees, good news. Our Rush Queue is back this year!
City of Small Blessings
Wong Chen-Hsi
Singapore
2024
English
110 min
PG13 (Some Coarse Language)
World Premiere
Wong Chen-Hsi
Wong Chen-Hsi is a filmmaker and educator from Singapore whose works centre on displacement, loss and change. She is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents and Torino Film Lab. Her films have screened at Clermont-Ferrand, Rome and Shanghai. City of Small Blessings, based on Simon Tay’s Singapore Literature Prize-winning novel, is her second feature after Innocents (2012).
Fran Borgia
Victor Banerjee,
Noorlinah Mohamed,
Brendon Fernandez