Transforming the Local

Sim Jiaying is a Lecturer at the University of Hong Kong and 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, transnational screen cultures, and creative-critical practice. Her writing has appeared in Jom, Film-Philosophy, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and anthologies by Edinburgh University Press and Routledge. She was a 2025 Hyundai Artlab Editorial Fellow. She has been working as a film programmer with SGIFF since 2024.

Lim Song Hwee is Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature and Transnational Cultural Studies, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan. He is the author of, among others, Taiwan Cinema as Soft Power: Authorship, Transnationality, Historiography (2022). His current research project is entitled ”Geopolitics and Transnational Cinemas: Focusing on Connections between 21st Century Taiwan Cinema and Southeast Asia,” funded by Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council.

Fran Borgia is the founder of Akanga Film Asia. He has produced numerous critically acclaimed films, including A Land Imagined (2018), which won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. His producing credits include Yuni (Toronto Platform Prize 2021), Tiger Stripes (Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize 2023), Stranger Eyes (Venice Main Competition 2024), Village Rockstars 2 (Busan Jiseok Award 2024), Renoir (Cannes Main Competition 2025), Amoeba (Toronto Discovery 2025 / APSA Best Youth Feature Film),
and Not a Hero (Berlinale Generation 2026). He is currently pursuing a PhD focused on Poetic Cinema at Auckland University of Technology (AUT).

Trained as a filmmaker, Koo Chia Meng has been actively involved in various aspects of film production since 2009. He co-founded his production company Fiction Shore in 2013, and subsequently completed his Master of Fine Arts in Film Directing at the Taipei National University of the Arts in 2019.

As Casting Director, Chia Meng worked on Singaporean feature films such as He Shuming’s Ajoomma (2022), Boo Junfeng’s Trinity (2026), as well as Anthony Chen’s Growing Up Trilogy, which concluded with We Are All Strangers (2026). Chia Meng also facilitates performance workshops with emerging filmmakers and actors to broaden industry engagement.

Kirsten Tan is a New York-based Singaporean filmmaker whose debut feature, Pop Aye, won major awards at Sundance, Rotterdam, and Zurich and was selected as Singapore’s official entry for the Academy Awards. Her short films have received multiple accolades at the Singapore International Film Festival. A Sundance Institute and Cannes Cinéfondation Fellow, Kirsten holds an MFA from New York University, fully supported by the Tisch Graduate Fellowship. She has received the NAC Young Artist Award, Her World’s Young Woman Achiever of the Year Award, and was nominated for The Straits Times’ Singaporean of the Year.