The Tan Ean Kiam Foundation-SGIFF Southeast Asian-Documentary

A group of young politicians campaigning against an authoritarian constitution speak up, spark hope and ignite a once-in-a-generation movement in this energetic exploration of the recent elections in Thailand.

Aswang follows a group of people whose lives have been caught up in these events: a journalist who tries to make a stand against lawlessness, a coroner, a missionary brother who comforts bereaved family members, and a street kid with parents in prison and friends in the cemetery. The film is a shocking account of unprecedented violence and the moral bankruptcy of a regime that still enjoys support from voters.

Longing for a life beyond her hometown in the Thai province of Buriram, Ploy moves to various Southeast Asian cities in search of work. She ends up in Singapore as a sex worker at an illegal, makeshift brothel operating under the cover of a jungle’s leafy darkness that is eventually turned into a public park.

A Sudanese family fees their country, seeking asylum in Thailand. They meet a young flmmaker, newly returned after a decade away from home. Despite their uncertain future, they form a heartfelt bond. They decide to make a flm together.

Worship is premised on a hard reality of the poor in Thailand: the only way for them to climb the economic ladder is not with hard work and financial prudence, but by winning the game of chance—lottery. Many of them thus stay devoted to their faith out of fervent hopes that the deities would reciprocate their devotion by endowing them with luck and prosperity.

With bracing honesty, filmmaker Quen Wong shares her journey as a transgender woman in Singapore—from her days as a teenage boy coming out to her uncommonly supportive family, to the present as a woman about to marry the love of her life. Locating herself within the local trans community, the documentary also weaves in interviews with different generations of trans women including ‘Anita’, a former legend of Bugis Street—a world-famous stomping ground for trans women in the 1950s to the ’80s—and Lune LOH, a trans youth activist.