Movies: Royston Tan

The Teenage Textbook Movie is a film adaptation of Adrian Tan's bestselling 1988 novel The Teenage Textbook. It is a lighthearted look at the lives of four students in Singapore as they start junior college....

Three tales of love wrap around the true story of a blind and deaf woman named Theresa Chan. In the first an elderly shopkeeper is devoted to his sick wife. In the second, two teenage girls become soul mates and lovers. In the third a chubby security...

Fast, frenetic, and furious best describe the story of five teenage boys all but abandoned by the system, estranged from any parents, and discarded by life in general. They build a world of there own in which gangs, drugs, fighting, body piercing, s...

Two Singaporean girls join together to form the Papaya Sisters, a getai group that sings at performances during the seventh lunar month. Big Papaya is estranged from her mother, who disapproves of her performances, whilst Little Papaya is an orphan w...

Parking attendant Fei Fei has always dreamed of becoming a singer, like her famous namesake – the legendary Taiwanese singer Fong Fei Fei. Fei Fei decides to follow her heart and joins a national talent contest. Her voice and sincerity captures the n...

Longing for human contact Xiao Wu tries all he can to make a connection through physical and metaphorical walls in that hour between night and day....

An award winning short with a hyper-kinetic, mind-bending foray into the world of adolescent Singaporean boys. '15': The Short; mixes documentary realism, dream sequences, rapid montages, and other stylistic flurries to unleash a hard-hitting cinema...

From Crazy Rich Asians (2018) to 12 Storeys (1997) to Sumpah Pontianak (The Curse of Pontianak) (1957), Singapore’s film industry is a diverse one and its evolution is nothing short of colourful. Recollecting Singapore’s famed studios in the 1950s to...

As a child, Lian Hua dreamed of becoming a performer in Singapore's Getai shows, concerts staged the same month each year and featuring emotionally broad songs of love, life and death. However, Lian's father dissuaded her from following her dreams, a...

An emotive anthology by seven of Singapore's most illustrious filmmakers, celebrating SG50 through the lives and stories of Singaporeans. Directed by Eric Khoo, Jack Neo, K. Rajagopal, Royston Tan, Tan Pin Pin, Boo Junfeng, Kelvin Tong....

A musical, all-singing, all-dancing, attack on censorship in Singaporean movies...

Six filmmakers present six short films about the experiences of Chinese immigrants. Shot across Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Myanmar, the anthology depicts the crisis of identity that accompanies international migration....

In D.I.Y, the squeak of dirty plates, the tap of a finger against a seafood restaurant aquarium, the thump of feet inside a cargo lift, and many other disparate sound, all come together into a quirky and funky piece of beat science, a human – and hum...

Choose your story in HIGH, the new interactive short film by Royston Tan....

Hock Hiap Leong pays tribute to this a 55-year old coffee shop on Armenian Street that has been an incessant inspiration to many people. The urban re-development board’s demolishing plans in 2001 inspired the filmmaker to capture this epitaph of hist...

Good Morning in Singapore....

2002 short film by Royston Tan...

Razak faces two problems after answering a call. He faces the sudden need to prepare for his mother’s departure rituals and musters the courage to explain to his younger brother who is intellectually disabled. Beyond Razak’s expectation, Rashid, his ...

A 2004 short film by Royston Tan made of three parts: Blind / Old Parliament House / Capitol Cinema...

In a hotel overlooking the Sea of Japan, six disparate stories inter-connect giving time a shape, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. Murder, sacrifice, betrayal, longing and regret weave into a tapestry of souls remem...